DaBaby: “I’m a force to be reckoned with.”

DaBaby: “I like pushing the envelope and being creative. I’m a high-level performer – [it’s about] how I can take it to another level. I try not to be complacent in my music or with my performances.”

DaBaby: “I definitely am the best rapper alive, mark my words.”

DaBaby: “When you got a sound that don’t sound like nobody else and it’s brand new, you’ve got to feed it to ‘em. You’ve got to force it on ‘em.”

DaBaby: “It’s just the way I’m set up, being that once-in-a-generation, once-in-a-lifetime, once-in-an-era type of star.”

DaBaby: “No, I wasn’t a bad kid. I was always intelligent, and strong-minded, and outgoing like I am now.”

DaBaby: “When I started coming on my music the way I was coming on freestyles – just relentless, at your neck, as soon as the beat starts, that’s when everything really clicked.”

DaBaby: “I’m the type of person, if I ain’t wrong, I’m gonna stand on that.”

DaBaby: “People think I’m more rowdy than I actually am. Just based on certain events and things, people think I walk around looking for trouble. But really, I’m one of the most laid-back, coolest people you’ll ever meet.”

DaBaby: “The music I make, it’s so hard. I listen to it 100,000 times before it even drops.”

DaBaby: “I was all about touching people and influencing people, I always been that type of person. I was the one teaching people things, I just always had a way with my words and I always spoke with substance.”

DaBaby: “I don’t even listen to peoples’ music… I’m really in-tune with my craft, I listen to me all day long.”

DaBaby: “I like to have fun with my videos and performances, that’s the most fun part when it comes to the music. I get to show off my character.”

DaBaby: “The goal was to be the hottest artist on the planet, and I think I’ve done that.”

DaBaby: “From my life experience, I don’t look at police as police anymore. I think they prey on people. Actually, I know they prey on people.”

DaBaby: “I am the type where I don’t worry about anything else but how to top what I did yesterday. My main goal is to top what I did before.”

DaBaby: “At the end of the day, somebody’s got to not like you. Somebody’s got to not like Baby.”

DaBaby: “My Internet presence was definitely bigger than the music. I’m so good at marketing, so once I knew I had them looking, I turned up with the music. I knew what I was doing – it was premeditated.”

DaBaby: “The way I make something out of nothing, I got that from my mama. That’s 100% her.”

DaBaby: “I studied people like Future, Lil Wayne and Kanye, who came up and consistently progressed. I’ve studied all the genius marketers throughout the rap game. I borrow from anybody with something to offer.”

DaBaby: “I’ve been broke my whole life, you get what I’m saying? I’m scared of the bank.”

DaBaby: “I never studied marketing. I’ve just always been a hustler. I didn’t even have a major decided at college. I only went to school for my parents.”

DaBaby: “Everything is organic. I got the wordplay, I got the vocabulary to really, really rap.”

DaBaby: “Whatever my daughter wants to do. She’s bright and brilliant. I’m just blessed to be able to establish a path for her before she even knows how to tie her shoe.”

DaBaby: “I love it when you have to perform at a certain level or else. That’s when I’m at my best.”

DaBaby: “My name was originally Da Baby Jesus, but I changed it like two years into my career because I didn’t want to offend anyone; although I feel like my purpose in the game is related and still is, I didn’t want my name to be a distraction from the music.”

DaBaby: “Anything I do, I’m doing it for a reason.”

DaBaby: “The idea of being a locally famous rapper was never real to me. I was immediately trying to get on the same charts as Drake.”

DaBaby: “Anybody that is trying to go into business with me, of course, I’m gon’ do my research on them.”

DaBaby: “I just had that mindset to never settle. That’s a credit to my pops, too. He used to say ‘the sky’s the limit’ every time we talked.”

DaBaby: “People are unpredictable at the end of the day.”

DaBaby: “My Internet presence was definitely bigger than the music. I’m so good at marketing, so once I knew I had them looking, I turned up with the music. I knew what I was doing – it was premeditated.”

DaBaby: “It’s just the risk that I take and the sacrifice that I make: Putting myself, my career, my family’s peace of mind on the line just to do right by my fans. It ain’t no gray area: You’re either with that and willing to go out of your way to make people who contribute to your dreams coming true happy or you aren’t.”

[On the current police system in the US]

DaBaby: “The overall structure that police operate on needs to change. It all needs to be changed from the inside out.”

DaBaby: “I made that a point when I was creating my sound from the beginning, I didn’t want to sound like anybody. Once I kind of found my own sound, I mastered it.”

DaBaby: “I’ll let the game tell me when to drop music. If it was up to me, I’d drop music every damn day.”

DaBaby: “When it comes to the music, the traits you got to have in order to make lit music, club music, to have the swag with it, to have the lingo – I got those traits, you know what I mean?”

DaBaby: “When you reach a certain level, people don’t got nothing left to do but find a reason not to like you.”

DaBaby: “I didn’t know of any rappers in Charlotte. Not to sound like I’m bragging, but I brought the music scene alive and shed the proper light on it. I took it to a whole other level when I started rapping.”

DaBaby: “Everything is organic. I got the wordplay, I got the vocabulary to really, really rap.”

The Guardian: To understand his meteoric rise it helps to see DaBaby in his element. A 5ft 8in speedball, he hurtles across the Rolling Loud stage like a basketball player. He raps at whiplash speeds, as if he is plugged into a power grid, and attempts to plough through the packed crowd. Then he basks in the moment of triumph and screams: “It’s pandemonium!”

The Guardian: There are things that DaBaby deems off-limits in interviews, namely, what he did between dropping out of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and starting to take rap seriously five or so years ago. It is filed euphemistically as stuff done “in the streets”. If you accept his early mixtapes as confession, there is plenty of drug-dealer talk, but watching this side of DaBaby you understand the hustler streak, the confidence and ability to make money, and the shrewd wariness that allowed him to stay alive and out of jail.

The Guardian: To listen to a DaBaby record, you might assume that his life was circumscribed by hedonism, violence and the desire to be the best rapper alive. But there is also a meticulousness to the way he moves.

The Guardian: In this sense, DaBaby reflects an anachronistic approach to the rap game. If the charts are filled with opiated threnodies about addiction and sadness, he eschews singing in favour of raps that could take your head off (“I can’t sing, but I’ll hit some notes here and there”), usually starting the second the beat hits. It helps that he gets beats from his nascent fellow Carolina star, JetsonMade, whose productions blend post-trap grit with a springy trampoline bounce.

The Guardian: Earlier this week, authorities detained and questioned DaBaby in Miami in connection with a robbery investigation, and later arrested him after police discovered an outstanding warrant pertaining to a battery charge in Texas. His team declined to comment on the Miami arrest, but he took to Instagram to tell people to “please stop talking to me about that weak ass 48 hours I spent in jail and that failed attempt to break my spirits and interrupt the path I’m taking to my God given success.”

The Guardian: Back in that room in Inglewood last month, he was similarly undeterred in his plans for world domination. “I’m just a quick learner – I learned to cook watching the cooking channel,” he says. There are plans to act, the growth of his Billion Dollar Baby label, and vague ambitions about using his platform for real change. When I ask where he thinks he will be in five years, he says that is way too far ahead for him to think about. Fifty years? He beams. “Fifty years, man? I better be damn near the president of the United States.”

The Guardian: I ask Taylor and his representatives if it’s possible to watch him make a song or two. It becomes quickly clear that it might not be the best idea. “It’s probably for the best,” Taylor tells me politely. “DaBaby doesn’t really like surprises.”