Baby Baby – “U Good?” Album Review

I’ve seen Fontez Brooks’ penis. It was at Greenville, SC’s staple music venue, Radio Room. I won’t give the year because I’m not sure of the statute of limitations on indecent exposure in South Carolina, but what I will say is that no one in attendance that night expected it – least of all Brooks, lead vocalist and guitarist of the band Baby Baby. I had spoken to him earlier in the night, and while he was in a good mood, nothing about his demeanor led me to believe that a dick-flashing was on the setlist somewhere between “Krew Love Pt. II” and “Fire!”. It very much felt like an idea that happens at the end of a sweaty, boozy night of blasting through raucous, high-energy rock songs, all hopped up on the love that comes from a tightly-packed crowd shouting back every lyric. Fontez’s bandmates seemed less than shocked by the event: bassist Hsiang-Ming Wen, percussionist Colin Boddy and drummer Grant Wallace didn’t even flinch. That wasn’t the first Baby Baby gig in which a penis has popped out. I didn’t even need to confirm that with anyone in the band before this went to print. I just know.

That’s a weird way to start an album review, and it’s an opener reserved only for them and perhaps the Red Hot Chili Peppers. But it felt like the quickest way to catch everyone up on the kind of uncertain chaos you sign up for when you come across Carrollton, Georgia’s favorite party scamps, Baby Baby.

U Good?, the quartet’s fourth studio album, has been a long time in the making. The first single that would make the cut for the album was released back in 2017. Appropriately dropped on Valentine’s Day, “Here” is an upbeat love song to ATL, complete with a shout-out to the city’s infamous traffic. Several months later, they followed up with “Boys Poop Too,” a song that lives on as the spruced up, rechristened opening track off the album “Next to Me.” The choice to give the song a more mature title feels right in line with the moments on the album wherein Brooks has a staredown with the inevitable act of doing more than just getting older but growing the hell up.

Brooks has always been willing to write from any feeling he could access: from the wistful vulnerability on display on “Heavy Hearts Club” found on the band’s sophomore effort Big Boy Baller Club straight through to the scrappy, snarling hubris that makes the track “Haters.” And that openness is still present here. Brooks doesn’t seem to be doing much romantic longing these days but there are two back-to-back tracks that play like they could be two sides of the same heart stomp. If “Girl Bye” got to be the “cackling-with-a-middle-finger-up” response, then “Tullamore Dew N U” could be the way-too-honest venting that happens at the bottom of a bottle. But this is the first Baby Baby album with every member of the band on the other side of 30, which means there’s a new brand of terra incognita appearing over the horizon: retrospection. 

If “Kidz”, from their 2011 debut album Money, is a declaration of youth, goals and untapped potential at the beginning of Brooks’ 20s, then “Petty Mayonnaise” is the point where he checks in on himself from the other side. “It’s the life that you’ve heard about / The one that you thought would never come / And now your back’s blown out / And you’re worn out / Can’t go on like that” is how his status report begins. The band has an impressive collection of songs that feel like they were recorded in the midst of a wild party, but not too many that grapple with figuring out the world when you realize you’re the only person at the party old enough to buy the booze. Writing from an older, wiser place even lends greatly to the track “90s Stuff” because Brooks is now far enough removed from his adolescence to be allowed a nostalgic moment of musing about it.

But the band doesn’t ever let a more mature outlook make the album feel intimidating. They make it clear from just the song titles that they still want to be the soundtrack to last night’s bad decisions. Still present is what I affectionately call the “ego song.” It’s the track where Brooks takes a moment to ask everyone — and no one in particular — how they’re handling sucking so hard in the presence of him and his crew. There’s one on almost every Baby Baby release and on this album, it appears in the form of “Don’t Be Tardy to the Party.” Brooks boasts over peppy finger snaps and a funky, creeping bassline: “How the hell we got it so well, you too busy stuntin’ on your own self / And you ain’t got it like me and that’s your own fault / You ain’t got it like we.” Though I believe every word Brooks sings here, “Don’t Be Tardy to the Party” never feels like a chest-beating open call for anyone to meet him in the parking lot after school. It feels like a song that knows its purpose is to start a moshpit when it’s played live. The guys give themselves heaps of opportunities around the verses to collectively throw the fuck down on stage.   

U Good? closes out with “Fitted Sheets for the Lonely,” an impassioned, bluesy number that seemingly asks the question that makes up the album’s title. And without paying too much attention to the track time on my first listen, I was convinced it was a sprawling, 10-minute epic. It certainly feels that way in how it slinks along through the verses before somewhat unexpectedly punching through into a blistering, percussion-rich breakdown. While it is the longest song on the album at four minutes and thirty seconds, U Good? is surgically focused, with a total runtime that comes in at thirty minutes. Unlike the last few LPs, the band forgoes any intros or outros this time around. It’s a decision that shows their willingness to edit themselves, to strip away anything that could possibly feel superfluous and distract from the very serious, very mature mission to have fun. 

U Good? is out via Big Boy Baller Club Records. It’s available for purchase digitally and across streaming platforms. 

Below, watch the video for “90s Stuff”: