Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Untrapped: The Story Of Lil Baby’ on Prime Video, Where The Atlanta Rapper Confronts Fame, Fatherhood, And Becoming A Voice For Change

Untrapped: The Story of Lil Baby (Prime Video) joins a wide slate of music docs that have dropped in the months in and around COVID, acting as both promotional tools and biographical content for artists who were forced out of a few cycles of the promotional beast. Untrapped features extensive interviews with Lil Baby and his fellow Atlanta rappers Gunna and Young Thug, as well as family members, friends, and music industry representatives, plus Drake and Charlamagne tha God. The doc made its premiere this past June at the Tribeca Film Festival.

UNTRAPPED: THE STORY OF LIL BABY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Untrapped: The Story of Lil Baby begins near where it ends, with the rapper whose real name is Dominique Armani Jones in his trailer at the Grammys preparing for a performance of his twice-nominated protest song “The Bigger Picture.” He dons an immaculate pair of throwback Jordans, a stylized, glittery tactical vest with balaclava to match – the world was still fully masked in 2021 – and carefully arranges the jewelry around his neck. “I always knew,” he says in voiceover of his childhood dreams, “Im-a be a real millionaire.”

Those dreams came true in more ways than one. As Untrapped traces Lil Baby’s meteoric rap game rise with 2017 and 2018 singles like “Freestyle” and “Drip Too Hard,” the latter a collaboration with Gunna, the doc also establishes that he technically came late to a rap career, since he had already established a lucrative revenue stream as an Atlanta-area drug dealer. “I never wanted to be a rapper,” Lil Baby says in a contemporary interview, having arrived in his white designer puffer to match his gleaming Chevrolet Corvette. “I was already young and turnt on the streets.” And his longtime friend and mentor Young Thug agrees. “He was always that guy that everybody loved. He was always a money getter. So, with or without rap, he was gonna get some money.”

After a two-year beef for possession, Baby hooked back up with friends Pierre Thomas and Kevin “Coach” Lee, co founders of Quality Control Music, and they quickly shuttled him into a recording studio, hoping to tap into his intangible “Lil Baby-ness.” Other early singles followed – “My Dawg” is where he “found his swag,” according to Lee – and before long the rapper’s debut album Harder Than Ever was hitting the Billboard Hot 100. “The Breakfast Club” radio host Charlamagne tha God sums up the hip-hop world’s excitement over Baby. “The flow, the voice, the cadence, the lyrics – it was just something happening.”

But there was something else happening, too, namely, COVID-19. Lil Baby’s next album My Turn dropped right before lockdowns, depriving him of promotion and live performances but still turning around millions in sales. The rapper also saw an opportunity during the protests over George Floyd’s death to lend his voice and support to the Black Lives Matter movement. By the time we rejoin him in the heady atmosphere around the 2021 Grammys, Lil Baby has become a little older – even if he’s still in his twenties – a little wiser, and totally committed to living his life with his two young sons’ well-being in mind.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Untrapped director Karam Gill is no stranger to rap music or the Atlanta scene. Lil Baby and Migos were featured in his 2020 documentary Ice Cold, which examined themes of transcendence and wealth through hip-hop jewelry, and he helmed the Showtime docu series Supervillain: The Making of Tekashi 6ix9ine as well as the 2017 doc G-Funk: The Sound That Changed Hip-Hop Forever.

Performance Worth Watching: Lil Baby’s adorable little boys Jason and Loyal are instant scene stealers in Untrapped, whether appearing on stage with their dad, getting gussied up for the Grammys, or acting like your typical toddler and five-year-old as they sound off around the house and playfully demand more snacks.

Memorable Dialogue: Quality Control Music co founder Kevin “Coach K” Lee describes how he had to coax and prod Lil Baby into trying out the rap game. “Most of these guys are telling your story,” he told him, referring to other rappers describing the Atlanta street hustle life in their songs. “Your story real.” Still, Lee says that Baby initially balked. The possibility of failure, and taking a hit to his cred, loomed. “He was so respected as a dope boy, as a street cat, he didn’t want to tarnish that.”

Sex and Skin: A few shots here in there of strip club interiors and/or exclusive VIP parties, with cash all over the floor and dancers in their bare essentials doing their thing.

Our Take: Many of the music docs that have proliferated in the wake of the global pandemic stick to a standard formula. There is the star to be profiled, the sweat and grind and glitz of their life on the road, and assorted cutaways to life at home or in quieter moments of downtime in exclusive hotel suites or the hushed cabin lighting of a private jet. But while there’s a bit of each of those tenets in Untrapped: The Story of Lil Baby, the narrative thrust here is more moody, more thoughtful, and generally more personal than so many of docs of its ilk. From its opening moments, which combine original footage with stylized shots of cars, drugs, and cash that channel the feel of some legacy television title about those very things, to the deeper exploration of Lil Baby’s upbringing on Atlanta’s southwest side and how that region’s chronic cycles of poverty and violence formed his worldview as much as they established something for him to overcome, Untrapped offers a more fully formed profile of an artist whose seemingly instant superstardom has given him as much success as it has larger issues to consider. But ultimately, it’s like Drake says, both about the music industry and life in general. “You gotta just keep working. You can’t acknowledge how well it’s going.” Opinions change – “that’s just how this shit works.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Untrapped: The Story of Lil Baby is more contemplative than most of the music documentaries that have dropped in the wake of COVID-related work stoppages, and it provides a wealth of exclusive access and content for the superstar rapper’s ever-growing fanbase.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges