Imagine dominating the global charts, right?
Like selling five million records in the United
States alone. It's wild to even think about.
It is. And setting these international dance
trends that completely just take over the internet.
But here's the kicker. Doing all of that for
a song you wrote just 24 months after deciding
to take music seriously. That's the part that
really gets me. Just two years. Exactly. So today
we are looking at a three minute and three second
trap track that completely rewrote the rules
of viral marketing. Welcome to the deep dive.
Glad to be here. Our mission today for you, the
listener, is to unpack a single defining cultural
moment from late 2019. We are exploring Lil Baby's
massive hit track, Whoa. Such a huge song. Right.
And we're using its comprehensive Wikipedia page
as our foundation to really understand the track's
production, its rollout, and just its staggering
commercial footprint. It really is a phenomenal
case study. Like when you look at the mechanics
of this release, you realize it is not just a
song that you know, happened to get popular.
Right, it wasn't an accident. Exactly. It's a
highly engineered blueprint for how modern music
captures attention in this super crowded digital
landscape, holds onto that attention, and then
eventually forces the traditional mainstream
media to pay attention. Yeah, that transition
is key. Okay, let's unpack this. Because before
a track can completely take over the world and
rewrite the charts, it obviously has to have
the right sonic ingredients. Oh, 100%. the audio
is the underlying engine. Right, like you can
have the best marketing in the world, but if
the audio doesn't hook the listener, the whole
machine falls apart. Exactly. So the foundation
for WoW was officially released on November 8th,
2019 through Quality Control Music and Universal.
And if we look at the architectural credits here,
it was written by Dominique Jones, which is Lil
Baby's real name, along with Chris Rosser, and
it was produced by Quay Global. Which is a great
production, and the critical reception of that
production is really revealing. Dwayne Gage over
at Rolling Stone gave this very specific mechanical
description of the beat. Oh, I loved his breakdown.
Yeah, it was great. He noted that the instrumental
is built entirely on a bed of heavy -hitting
808s and suspenseful piano. Which is such a crucial
combination to understand. Because when Gage
mentions heavy 808s, for those who don't produce
music, we're talking about that deep rattling
sub bass sound. The stuff that rattles your windows.
Exactly. It originally came from the Roland TR
-808 drum machine. It's that ultra -low frequency
you literally feel vibrating in your chest when
a car drives by with the volume up. Yeah, it's
totally physical. Right. So you pair that aggressive
physical bass with the piano loop that feels
tense and unresolved, and you create a very specific
psychological environment for the listener. And
Gage pointed out that this specific instrumental
environment gave Lil Baby the perfect canvas
to sing, like to really stretch his vocals out
rather than just delivering rapid fire bars.
Which was a bit of a shift for him. It was. It
allowed him to reflect on his incredibly rapid
success. And here's that staggering detail I
mentioned earlier at the time of this song's
release. Lil Baby had only been doing rap full
-time for two years. Two years? I mean, from
a complete novice. to the architect of a global
hit, it completely defies the traditional timeline
of the music industry. Totally. But it's worth
noting that not every critic viewed this track
as a groundbreaking sonic masterpiece. True,
true. Like over at Stereogum, Tom Brahan labeled
it a fairly standard Atlanta trap song. He did,
though he included a major caveat. Even while
calling the structure standard, Brahan admitted
that Lil Baby has this undeniably hypnotic way
with a hook. Yeah, the hook is undeniable. Right.
He specifically pointed out how Lil Baby manages
to settle perfectly into that deliberately misspelled
title word, you know, whoa, spelled W -O -A -H.
Which is funny. But it works. It really does.
But I actually want to push back on Stereogum's
fairly standard label. Oh, really? Yeah. Think
about that combination Gage mentioned, the suspenseful
piano and the heavy 808s. To me, that sounds
exactly like the tense soundtrack of a thriller
movie. Oh, I see where you're going. Right. Like
right in that quiet, heart -pounding moment,
right before the protagonist's big dramatic monologue,
it is built to create this massive anticipation.
So my question is, can a song be structurally
standard in its genre, but still be perfectly
engineered to be hypnotic? Well, what's fascinating
here is I see where you're going with the cinematic
idea, but I'd actually argue it's less about
building to a narrative monologue and more about
creating an intentional sonic void. An intentional
void. How so? Well, it isn't building to a climax
of words, right? It's leaving an empty space
that forces the listener's brain to fill in the
blanks with physical movement. Ah, okay. Atlanta
trap, which heavily relies on rapid rattling
hi -hats and booming sub bass. It has a very
established formula. So Brandingham is right
that the ingredients are standard. Sure. But
the execution is what makes it hypnotic. So it's
about precision, not necessarily invention. Precisely.
Innovation doesn't always require inventing a
completely new genre. Sometimes true innovation
is taking the existing framework of an Atlanta
trap song and just polishing it to a microscopic
level of perfection. Right, dialing it all the
way in. Exactly. The contrast between that heavy,
driving, aggressive beat and Lil Baby's stretched
melodic vocal delivery creates tension and release.
The piano and the bass. Yeah. The suspenseful
piano winds the listener up, the 808s provide
the release, and then the stretched vocals give
you something deeply human to latch onto. But
that psychological tension created by the piano
and the bass, it doesn't just resolve itself
in the audio. It practically begs for a physical
release. Oh, for sure. Which explains why Lil
Baby didn't just quietly upload this track to
Spotify and wait for people to find it. He took
it straight to a visual physical medium. And
this is the part of the rollout that I find absolutely
fascinating. Because having a hypnotic hook is
only half the battle. Exactly. The next phase
is operationalizing that hook. Right. So a full
week before the official release on November
1st, 2019, Lil Baby posts a preview of the single,
but he doesn't use traditional channels. He previews
it on the app Triller. Triller, yeah. Context
is everything here for you listening, because
this was his first solo release since a track
called back on. He was setting the stage for
his massive 2020 sophomore album, My Turn. Such
a big album. Massive. And Whoa was chosen as
the lead single. So the stakes for this specific
drop were astronomical. And going to Triller
was a highly calculated move. Like he wasn't
just giving people a sneak peek of the audio.
He was introducing a behavior. The clip he posted
featured a very specific dance move, which was
described as hitting the whoa. He paired the
audio with a highly replicable visual hook. Which
is brilliant. It is. And this brings up a dynamic
that dictates so much of what we hear today.
When an artist teases a song alongside a dance
challenge on an app like Triller, is the music
driving the dance or is the dance driving the
music's success? Like, which one is actually
the engine? Well, if we connect this to the bigger
picture, you have to look at how passive broadcasting
is completely dead. OK. Dead in what way? Like,
it used to be that a label paid to play a song
on the radio. And you, the listener, passively
consumed it while driving or sitting at home.
Right. Right? The music was pushed onto you.
Right. You had no say in it. Exactly. But the
genius of the trailer rollout wasn't just giving
fans a dance. It was handing the audience the
raw stems of the culture to play with. So it
completely flips the relationship. Completely.
By pairing a highly anticipated audio snippet
with a specific physical movement, Little Baby
turned passive listeners into active participants
before the song even existed on a streaming platform.
When a user on Triller attempts to hit the whoa,
they aren't just dancing. They are repeatedly
looping the audio. They are internalizing the
rhythm. Right, they have to hear it 20 times
to get the video right. Exactly. The dance becomes
a vehicle for the music, and the music becomes
the soundtrack for the user's own performance.
Think about how you discover music now. You are
probably scrolling your feed, you hear a 10 -second
audio loop paired with a visual, and suddenly
that loop is stuck in your head. It's unavoidable.
Lil Baby banked on the fact that by the time
you actually opened Apple Music or Spotify on
release day, your brain was already craving the
full resolution of that 10 -second loop you'd
been hearing all week. And let's look at the
back -end mechanics of that. When fans do the
whoa, the algorithm registers their video as
a micro -engagement. Right. It signals to the
broader internet ecosystem that this track is
already a cultural staple. So the demand is artificially,
but very effectively, scaled up. before the supply
is even officially available. Which transitions
us perfectly into the actual data, because that
interactive viral tease translated immediately
into staggering commercial dominance. He didn't
just climb the charts, he bypassed the stairs
entirely. Yeah, the immediate commercial impact
is where we see the difference between a good
song and a cultural phenomenon. Here's where
it gets really interesting. Within 24 hours of
its official release, whoa, hit number one on
Apple Music. Just 24 hours. To put that into
perspective for you, hitting number one on a
major streaming platform in a single day is like
a blockbuster movie, completely selling out every
single theater in the country on opening night,
but doing it purely based on a 30 -second teaser
trailer on a social media app. That's a great
analogy. The pent -up demand just exploded. And
the broader industry metrics reflected that explosion
immediately. It debuted at number 19 on the Billboard
Hot 100, and it possessed enough momentum to
eventually climb and peak at number 15. Which
is huge for a rap single. Definitely. It also
reached number seven on the Hot R &B Hip -Hop
Songs chart, and number six on the Rhythmic chart.
It also debuted at number one on the Rolling
Stone Top 100. And according to our sources,
that made it only the sixth song ever to do that.
Wow, the sixth ever? Yeah. The 11th overall to
hit number one, but only the sixth to debut there.
And it was Lil Baby's very first number one on
that specific chart. Plus, it became his third
number one on the Billboard Streaming Songs chart,
following Yes Indeed and Drip Too Hard. The sheer
volume of those debuts proves the efficacy of
the Triller strategy. But it's the long -term
certifications that tell the real story of the
song's structural integrity. Let's talk about
those certifications because the numbers are
massive. In the US alone, the song achieved 5x
platinum status. Insane. That is 5 ,000 equivalent
units. It also went global, hitting silver in
the UK with 200 ,000 units and gold in Brazil
with 20 ,000 units. But, um... What exactly does
5 miles in equivalent units mean in an era where
people aren't driving to a store to buy a CD?
It is a critical distinction. In the modern music
industry, the RIA calculates certifications by
combining pure sales with streaming figures.
Right, because nobody buys tracks on iTunes anymore.
Basically, yeah. Because an individual stream
generates a fraction of a cent, it takes roughly
150 on -demand audio streams to equal one single
track sale. Oh, wow. OK. So when we talk about
five million equivalent units for a single song,
we're not talking about five million clicks.
We are talking about hundreds of millions of
individual streams. So a viral trend might get
you you a million streams over a weekend, but
it won't get you to 5x platinum. Exactly. We
see viral songs every single day that spike on
a Friday and completely disappear by Tuesday.
A dance challenge can start the initial fire,
but a dance challenge alone cannot sustain hundreds
of millions of dreams over multiple years. That
makes total sense. The flawless execution of
the song itself, that hypnotic tension and release
we talked about earlier, that is what converted
a viral moment into a permanent fixture on people's
daily playlists. Right. People weren't just doing
the dance ones for the camera. They were living
with the song in their cars, in the gym, in their
headphones. Which proves the audio had real weight.
But once you have the audio dominating the charts,
And you have hundreds of millions of streams
logging worldwide from the U .S. to the U .K.
to Brazil. There is still one final frontier
to cross. Oh, yes. The visual legacy. Exactly.
To truly cement a song's legacy, you have to
lock in its cultural footprint visually, and
then you have to cross over into legacy mainstream
validation. The audio establishes the market
share. But the visuals dictate the cultural narrative.
And the visual narrative for Woe was incredibly
specific. A month after the song drops, on December
6, 2019, the official music video is released.
It completely leans into the regional culture
that created the sound. It really did. You have
these exotic cars drifting in lots. You have
Lil Baby and a massive crowd of people natively
performing the Woe Dance Challenge. And it is
packed with authentic cameos. Right. Yeah, regional
rappers like Lil Durk and Lil Marlo are there,
alongside members of Lil Baby's own family. It
was a very intentional grounding of the artist.
Michael Cipinara over at Billboard reviewed the
video and specifically called the visuals energetic.
Energetic is a good word for it. It is, but that
energy isn't manufactured on a Hollywood soundstage.
It is deeply rooted in the gritty communal authenticity
of Atlanta's street culture. It was basically
a visual victory lab for his core audience. But
then, exactly a month after that authentic Atlanta
video drops, the environment changes in a massive
way. Yeah, the pivot. On January 6, 2020, Lil
May B takes woe to mainstream late night television.
He performs the track on The Tonight Show starring
Jimmy Fallon. And that right there is the friction
point of modern pop culture. So what does this
all mean for an artist's trajectory? Think about
the stark visual and cultural contrast for a
second. On one hand, you have the raw, unpolished
street culture of the music video, drifting cars,
rap cameos, family members. And then, mere weeks
later, you have the highly polished, sterile,
brightly lit environment of network television
with Jimmy Fallon. Have you ever noticed how
a song's entire vibe shifts when you see an artist
bring their heavy, 808 -driven club track to
a legacy television stage? It can sometimes feel
like two completely different worlds colliding
awkwardly. This raises an important question
about how artists navigate the transition from
regional star to global icon. It is an incredibly
delicate tightrope. Because you don't want to
alienate the fans who got you there. Exactly.
On one side, an artist must maintain their authentic
roots. If Lil Baby abandons the culture that
championed him on Triller and in the streets
of Atlanta, he loses his foundation. Right. He
solidifies that foundation with music video.
But to achieve that 5x platinum status, to become
a generational artist, you eventually have to
access the demographics that do not use Triller.
The people watching network television at 1130
p .m. Exactly. You have to bring the culture
of the drifting cars to the Jimmy Fallon stage,
but without watering it down. And that is the
key. He performed a heavy trap song with a misspelled
title on one of the most traditional media platforms
in America. He didn't soften the 808s. He didn't
roll out an acoustic guitar. Thank goodness.
Right. He forced the mainstream to adapt to his
frequency rather than diluting his frequency
to fit the mainstream. When an artist can successfully
execute that translation, they cement their transition
from a viral moment to a lasting cultural force.
It is the ultimate proof of concept. Let's look
back at the masterclass we've unpacked today.
The journey of woe is a perfect schematic of
the modern music industry. It really is. It begins
with the raw ingredients. heavy 808s, a suspenseful
piano, and a hypnotic hook that perfectly utilized
the Atlanta trap formula. From there, it leveraged
a strategic triller dance tease, utilizing micro
engagements to turn passive listeners into active
marketers. Brilliant strategy. That strategy
rocketed the track to a 24 -hour Apple Music
takeover and eventually sustained a 5x platinum
run globally. And finally, it capped it all off
by taking the authentic street -level energy
of an Atlanta music video straight to the legacy
stage of late night television. It is a flawless
operational trajectory. But, you know, looking
at all of the data and history we've pulled from
the source material today, there's one detail
that I keep coming back to, and it leaves me
with a final thought for you to consider. Oh,
what's that? We noted earlier that at the time
this song became a massive chart -dominating
cultural phenomenon, Lil Baby had only been pursuing
rap full -time for two years. Right. From a complete
novice to a chart -topping architect in just
24 months. What does that mean for the future
of art? When a creator can go from a standing
start to a genre -defining 5x platinum artist
who is actively setting international cultural
dance trends in just two years, I mean, does
this hyper -accelerated timeline completely change
the way we define a master of a craft? That's
a deep question. Right. For decades, we've believed
in the 10 ,000 -hour rule, the idea that it takes
years of grinding and obscurity to perfect an
art form. But if the modern tools for production,
algorithmic viral marketing, and global digital
distribution are this powerful and accessible,
is the 10 ,000 -hour rule dead. Wow. Have we
entered an era where mastering the mechanisms
of the internet is just as important as mastering
the instrument itself? That is a brilliant question.
Does the sheer speed of algorithmic culture fundamentally
change what it takes to be considered a master?
It completely reframes how we look at every new
artist breaking onto the scene today. It really
does. Well, thank you so much for joining us
on this deep dive. I hope you walk away listening
to the charts a little bit differently. Keep
exploring the fascinating invisible mechanics
behind the music you hear every day. because
the real magic is rarely what happens on stage,
it's everything that happens before you even
press play. Catch you next time!