Songfacts®:

• "Million Dollar Baby" is Tommy Richman's anthem for getting that girl. He talks about cleaning up his act and making it big so he can win over his love interest.
• The track is a genre-bending banger that mixes hip-hop, alt-rock, and a sprinkle of R&B. Richman even shows off his vocal range with some octave jumps.
• While Richman wrote "Million Dollar Baby" himself, the production is a team effort - Max Vossberg, Jonah Roy, Mannyvelli, Sparkheem, and Kavi all joined forces to craft the track. Roy, Mannyvelli, and Sparkheem also worked on Larger Than Life, the 2023 mixtape by Richman's mentor and label head, Brent Faiyaz.
• Richman started teasing "Million Dollar Baby" on social media on April 22, 2024, posting some grainy VHS-style recording footage. The snippet went viral on TikTok, racking up over 9.5 million views in under a week. He finally dropped the full song four days later.
• Soon after its release, "Million Dollar Baby" went viral on TikTok. Users soundtracked their videos with the song, showcasing photos of themselves before and after starting a relationship with a Black woman.
• The song's music video opens with Richman balling out in an LA nightclub, money raining down around him. The scene then cuts to the artist posing in front of the iconic Eiffel Tower in Paris. Finally, the clip comes full circle, returning to his home state of Virginia, where Richman chills at the very "Queen's Gambit" he mentions in the song. Richman employs a VHS effect and a fisheye lens, giving the video a vintage aesthetic.
• Kavi was the one responsible for the song's breakthrough moment. While digging through a sample pack from Canadian producer DJ Smokey that he stumbled upon on Reddit, he came across the vocal chop that became the inspiration for the song's catchy, pitched-down opening hook. "I was just like, 'Oh, this is sort of hard!'" Kavi recalled to Billboard. "And Tommy agreed. So we catered that vibe based off of the chop that I found and just built it into its own world."
• Tommy Richman made the odd decision to not include his Billboard Hot 100 hits "Million Dollar Baby" and "Devil Is A Lie" on his debut Coyote album. As a result, Coyote didn't show up on the Billboard 200 albums chart when it debuted.