Baby Keem and his mother moved from Long Beach, California, to Las Vegas when he was a child to be closer to family, and it’s a place that holds tough memories for the rapper.
Speaking to HighSnobiety, he says he continues to reflect on his childhood through his music – specifically his February drop “Highway 95 Pt. 2,” the follow-up to 2021’s “Highway 95.”
“I knew I would eventually have to address Vegas,” he says. “I just didn’t know it was going to come out like this.”
He adds, “But when you really dig deep – and I was digging deep, deep – through some of these ideas, it was clear that being from this place was the root of a lot of these concepts. My mom didn’t start using substances until we moved to Vegas. … Vegas is hard for me. I still have some family there, but it’s tough.”
“Highway 95” was featured on Keem’s Grammy-winning album The Melodic Blue in 2021, while Pt. 2 is included on 2026’s Ca$ino. There is a five-year gap between those two projects, due in part to health issues he has not publicly discussed.
“I’ll never be super public about what it was because I don’t want that to be the narrative,” he tells HighSnobiety. “Going through that was the hardest setback for me.”
“You have all these [moments] where you’re like, ‘Damn, I really won’t make music ever again.’ I turned off my Twitter. I didn’t need to see people telling me to release when I physically could not make music for a year. I had to learn how to do it again. It really f***** me up to where I didn’t want to go outside at all.”
The full interview is available online.
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