![]() ![]() ![]() YoungBoy was the third most-streamed artist in the United States last year (according to Luminate), behind Drake and Taylor Swift, and currently sits at No. 1 on YouTube’s Top Artists page, where he has charted for the last 309 weeks. (Of the latter, 12 charted in the top 10, and four went to No. 1.) Of the whopping eight full-length projects he released in 2022 alone, five reached the top 10 his latest, January’s I Rest My Case, debuted at No. 9. Since breaking out from his hometown of Baton Rouge, La., at age 15 - already sounding like a world-weary veteran who had absorbed a lifetime of pain - he has landed 96 entries on the Billboard Hot 100 and 26 projects on the Billboard 200. Yet in an extreme and emblematic case of streaming-era stardom, YoungBoy is one of the most popular and prolific rappers on the planet. (A middle-aged blonde from the mansion next door cranes her neck from the window of her SUV to gawk at the camera crew unloading outside for today’s cover shoot.) And it’s true that the artist born Kentrell DeSean Gaulden, whom fans call YoungBoy or simply YB, has practically zero mainstream presence: He’s not on the radio, scarcely performs live, regularly deactivates his social media accounts and shies away from the press. ![]() Should they learn that he is signed to Motown Records and makes music as YoungBoy Never Broke Again, it’s likely they would still draw a blank. The neighbors have yet to figure out who exactly it is that moved in just over a year ago: a rail-thin 23-year-old with faded face tattoos and a stable of luxury vehicles that never leave the garage. Inside, the space is all white and sparsely furnished, decorated with a pair of spindly Christmas trees, a half-dozen painted portraits - in one, a smiling young man feeds his daughter a cheeseburger - and an enormous plaque that glints in the sunlight and reads, “100 RIAA Gold/Platinum Certifications,” and, in larger letters, “ YoungBoy Never Broke Again.” Its recipient, who introduces himself as Kentrell, sits quietly beneath it as a motherly woman named Quintina, who is not his mother but his financial adviser, paints his fingernails black. ![]() On a clear day like today, you can look out the living room’s floor-to-ceiling windows, over the icy swimming pool and presently invisible dirt bike track below, and the entirety of the Salt Lake Valley spreads out before you like an overturned snow globe. Check out the videos below.YoungBoy Never Broke Again: Photos From the Billboard Cover Shoot Naturally, Shmurda was unhappy about the way the Baton Rouge rapper handled the situation, launching a long tirade on Instagram Live, threatening to “boom” a variety of foes “on camera,” including gossip blogger DJ Akademiks (who, ironically, reposted the video on his Twitter), controversial rap manager Wack 100, and YoungBoy, who naturally responded with some threats of his own. After YoungBoy apparently rebuffed the request, he posted a screenshot of the Instagram DM conversation to his Instagram grid, mocking Bobby for even reaching out in the first place. The trouble apparently started when Smurda apparently requested a feature from the younger artist. As usual, a bunch of accounts on Twitter have saved the back-and-forth exchange, which as usual, seems to have started over ego and ignorance. Despite both men narrowly avoiding spending the bulk of their respective adulthoods in prison, Bobby Shmurda and YoungBoy Never Broke Again have apparently decided that beefing on Instagram is more important than getting money and staying out of trouble. ![]()
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