Since picking up the microphone in 2014, North Carolina rapper DaBaby (born Jonathan Lyndale Kirk in 1991) has shown a keen awareness of how to cultivate presence in the internet era, coupling his bounciest tracks (the flex anthem “Suge”, the equally confident “Goin Baby”, the Offset-featuring “Baby Sitter”) with outrageous videos and crafting a persona by turns rude, violent, goofy and dead serious. His charismatic and infectious energy carries his tracks, and you can hear a lot of that braggadocio on songs such as 2019’s “VIBEZ” and 2020’s “PRACTICE”. But he can also uncover layers of emotion: On “INTRO”, which leads off KIRK, he raps candidly about losing his father—and thinking about his daughter—in the midst of his rise.