Baby Boy is shedding his antlers. After years spent helping shape the unpredictable technicolor world of Bay Area hip-hop collective AG Club, the genre-shapeshifting juggernaut steps into the frame alone for the first time with BUCK*, an eight-track solo project available now via Epic Records. The record doesn’t abandon the genre-smashing instincts that first pulled listeners toward him; it simply draws the curtain a little closer, allowing R&B, rap, pop, and rock to spill together inside something that feels handcrafted in a bedroom with close friends wandering in and out. Primarily created alongside producers and multi-instrumentalists Mikey Mu, jerod, and Saint Patrick, with appearances from collaborators including Dilip, berg, Hamish, and Isaac Rose, BUCK* sounds warm enough to invite you inside but vulnerable enough to make you wonder whether you should be hearing it at all.

“BUCK* is love wrapped up in the reality of my life. No pretending. No games,” Baby Boy shares. “These songs are the sonic embodiment of all the love and all the loss I’ve experienced.”

After making music since 2017, the project marks the first time he has fully tested what his voice sounds like when there is nowhere else to hide within the collective. That openness bleeds into “SUM1ELSE.mp3,” a wistful standout that catches a relationship at the exact moment two people begin reaching in opposite directions. The track floats through a dreamlike haze before the chorus starts bouncing beneath the heartbreak, almost like a forgotten Y2K pop&B B-side rediscovered at the bottom of an old CD binder.

“I think I’m tongue-tied, I’m just thinking ’bout you tonight, alright?” Baby Boy confesses before the reality sharpens: “Your hands tied around me, you used to ride beside me / Now you’re here thinking ’bout someone else.” That push and pull between sweetness and grief quietly underscores the entire record, whether he is looking backward on “ST CHARLES,” a joyous but bittersweet reflection on growing up, or releasing everything he struggles to say aloud on the guitar-laden “AVOIDANCE.”

The latter arrives with a music video co-directed by Baby Boy and longtime AG Club collaborator Manny Madrigal, initially positioning him as the only live wire inside a house full of family members drained of emotion. Then the current reverses, leaving Baby Boy dazed while everyone around him smiles and dances, each person finding expression only once they are isolated again.

For Baby Boy, BUCK* is less about proving he can stand alone and more about finally lowering the defenses that made solitude feel necessary. “My antlers grew too big. I spent so much time defending myself that I forgot how to let people in,” he admits. “This album is me shaking them off. Starting fresh. If you want to know me — Jah, or Baby Boy — just know I’m in there.”

That invitation carries particular weight after AG Club spent years expanding hip-hop’s borders through projects like BRODIE WORLD, festival stages from Coachella to Camp Flog Gnaw, and a catalog built on reckless experimentation, cultural fluency, and feeling everything at full volume. BUCK* still carries that youthful momentum, but the colors feel softer around the edges now, as if Baby Boy has finally allowed the light to reach places he once kept guarded. The project is romantic without pretending love is painless, optimistic without sanding away the losses that shaped it, and deeply personal without closing the door behind him. This may be his first solo body of work, but it doesn’t feel like Baby Boy stepping away from the pack; it feels like him turning around, antlers finally lowered, and asking listeners to walk beside him.