The Awakenings of Baby Tate: L.A.-based rapper experiences Sexplorations with new EP
It’s been eight years since Baby Tate released her debut EP, ROYGBIV. Back then, she was going by Yung Baby Tate, and she spent the next few years releasing a string of EPs and singles, building up to the Girls album in 2019.
But this feels like a fresh era for Tate, and not just because she dropped the “Yung.” She just released the EP Baby Tate Presents – Sexploration: The Musical, and has been dropping videos of each of the tracks, week by week. There’s a new album coming later, but for now, this is more than enough. It’s a wonderfully open, vulnerable body of work, detailing recent awakenings. It’s not subtle – the meanings aren’t hidden. Tate has laid it all out on the table.
“I feel like as I’ve grown as an artist and as a person, the evolution is really just refining and tightening and honing in on the skills that I started off with,” Tate says. “I’m really proud of this project because it feels to me the most ‘me’ that I’ve sounded in a while. I attribute that to just really coming into my own this year, learning a lot about myself, and allowing that to shine through these records.”
And shine through, it does. Tate turned 27 this year, she moved to Los Angeles from Atlanta, and those changes brought with them awakenings. It’s been a big year.
“I feel like this year I’ve just put on super big girl panties and I’ve been adulting more than I ever have,” she says. “Learning myself, becoming independent, and I think with these discoveries I’ve also been having a lot of personal discoveries, which is why Sexplorations is called what it is. I’ve really been exploring who I am as a person, what I like sexually, and just putting it out to the world.”
It's wonderful to hear that Tate has relocated to our city, and that she’s having a great time here. The last time we spoke to her (in 2019), she was talking about the time that she pulled her hamstring at Rolling Loud. She has better memories of L.A. now.
“I had a show out here last year, one of my first headline shows out here in L.A. – I think it was my first,” she says. “It really surprised me. Just the love and support that I got from out here, because I’m not from here, so you never know sometimes. But I also have a show coming up in January. I’m doing a three-city tour, and we’re hitting L.A. again. So yeah, I’ve had really great times out here. I have family out here – my brothers live out here, so I’ve been thoroughly enjoying it.”
She’s certainly been enjoying some experiences, based on the subject matter detailed on Sexplorations. We don’t need to dig any deeper – it’s all in the lyrics. And those experiences are ongoing; Tate was originally going to release an album this year but decided to go with an EP first as she experienced more. Research, if you will.
“I wanted to give myself more time, more time to grow and continue to have experiences to write about,” she says. “So I was like, you know what guys? I think we should push the album back to 2024, but I still wanted to put some music out and these five songs were created during the span of making the album. It wasn’t like we went in with the idea to make an EP. These are songs that represent the journey of what the album will feel like as well.”
“Jersey” was the first single to be released, back in September.
“We chose that one because it just felt the most fun and the most representative of what this project would feel like,” Tate says. “It had been so long since I’d dropped any music, so I wanted to start off with something fun, something fresh, and then we dropped the first two videos —‘Love Everybody’ and ‘Lollipop” — when the project dropped. Last week we dropped the ‘Jersey’ video, this week we dropped the ‘Grip’ video, and then next week we’ll drop the ‘Wig’ video. We recorded all five of these videos in two days, and it’s meant to feel like a school play or like a school musical. We wanted to pace it out so people didn’t just get burned out from all of this content because there’s just so much. I wanted it to feel like people have something to look forward to. The holidays are coming up, I didn’t want to run into Mariah Carey-Land. So we were like, let’s get these videos out. Everyone can enjoy the musical.”
Tate also put a mockumentary out there, and it’s hilarious. Her dancers and other assorted personnel go out of their way to snipe about Tate, throwing shade in all sorts of imaginative ways. It’s always charming to know that artists are capable at laughing at themselves.
“That was actually my manager Amber’s idea,” Tate says. “I feel like a lot of times, when people do behind-the-scenes videos and stuff, because of the fact that we live in a social media era, everyone sees everything anyway so the BTS doesn’t really feel that important anywhere. ‘Girl, I just saw that on your Instagram story.’ So we wanted the BTS to feel fun and like something that would actually be entertaining. So Amber had the idea of doing a mockumentary where I’m painted to be the bad guy and the villain in this musical, which was actually very triggering to me because growing up, a lot of times, people in the musical theater spaces that I was in as a teenager, would be like, ‘Oh, you think you’re supposed to be the star, you get all the solos, you feel like you’re entitled.’ So I was telling her, ‘I don’t know if I want to do this, I’m feeling triggered. This is bringing up childhood trauma.’ But it was really fun at the end of the day.”
Baby Tate is clearly having a blast as she enters this latest chapter of her life. She’s touring early next year – it’ll be fascinating to see Sexplorations on a stage. Catch her while you can.
The Awakenings of Baby Tate: Baby Tate Presents – Sexplorations: The Musical is out now.
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