“16” by Baby Keem

Throughout most of Baby Keem’s “16”, i.e. the refrain and chorus, he takes on the role of the addressee’s mentor, if you will. That is to say, in the former case, he is telling this person not to “feel sorry” for him or herself, as things are not as bad as this individual perceives. 

Rather, the onus is on him or her to conduct themselves wisely. And in that regard, Keem actually sounds a lot like parent, i.e. being ‘the only one that knows about the tragedy’ or the true history of the addressee.  Also to note, throughout his The Melodic Blue album, he has sort of a tendency to complain about his upbringing. 

So what we’re getting at is that perhaps in this case he is taking on the role of his mom (whom he mentions at the beginning of the first verse), thus telling his own self not to overexaggerate the past, or something like that.

In the chorus, Keem goes about presenting himself as someone who can and should be allowed to guide the addressee out of whatever lost state he or she has found themselves in. 

And in the sole verse of this piece, the rapper is kinda apologizing to people like his “mama” and his “girl” for making mistakes in his respective relationships with them over and over again. 

Also to note, the title of the song is never actually mentioned in the lyrics. But based on other parts of Melodic Blue, it wouldn’t be out of the way to postulate that Keem is detailing his feelings from when he was 16 years of age, which in his case wasn’t that long ago.

In Conclusion

So conclusively, we’re compelled to say that the three sections of this song, i.e. the refrain, chorus and verse, don’t necessarily make any type of comprehensive sense. In other words, the listener is challenged with using their imagination to figure out how the three of them relate.  But so it is with some other songs found on The Melodic Blue also.