What people get wrong about NBA Youngboy

Last month, I climbed to the 400 section of the Toyota Center in Houston, where the Rockets play basketball. I was surrounded by kids — well, kids to me, as they were all in their mid-20s or younger. There were a few middle schoolers around. Many of the fans were waving lime green bandanas, rolling blunts or getting their cell phones ready to record.

I went to the concert to understand how NBA Youngboy, a rapper without any top-10 Billboard hits or anything resembling major crossover appeal, could sell out arenas across the country and elicit thousands of viral videos of fans screaming every lyric at his shows.

A few minutes before the concert began, I sat a couple of seats down from two young men, but they asked me to move so they could sit with their homegirl. They offered to Cash App me for switching seats. I declined the money, of course, and moved. After I sat behind them, I decided to ask them about NBA Youngboy. Both men were 23 and traveled from Detroit to see their favorite rapper.

“He just don’t miss,” one of the men said. “His lyrics, his passion. …”

His friend simply mused: “GOAT. That’s it.”

Before they could elaborate, the lights went dark. It was time for NBA Youngboy to hit the stage. Fans rose to their feet and joined a chorus of thousands, yelling louder than I’ve ever heard a crowd yell for a rapper.

I spent the rest of the night watching one of music’s biggest acts, who’s in the midst of one of the biggest rap tours ever, whose music you’ve likely only heard from your kids or younger cousins. As I watched the most passionate crowd I’ve ever witnessed, I thought about the nature of joy, what our generation doesn’t understand about NBA Youngboy, and how a show full of happy Black kids can garner a reputation of being about nothing but violence.

I really can’t talk about my wedding weekend without talking about NBA Youngboy. 

Let me explain. 

A few months ago, my wife-to-be and I were in New Orleans, the site of our wedding, finalizing plans and logistics. We knew the wedding would end at around 11 p.m., and in a city like New Orleans that only meant our event was just the opening act for a night of partying for our guests.

So we approached a small pub in the French Quarter, a couple of doors down from the wedding, to ask the folks there if they could handle a few dozen or so stragglers coming in after the festivities. They assured us they could handle it. So, we had a plan: to have the wedding, go to the pub afterward, and continue our night.

So on our wedding night, when the streamers were lit and we exited the venue, we walked straight to that pub ready for a whole slew of bad decisions. However, when we got there, the bar was empty. The doors were locked, and one lone bartender was tidying up for the night. 

I knocked on the windows until she came out. I was incredulous. What happened to our afterparty?

“My manager said we have to close early,” she explained. “There’s some rapper…NBA something. His show is tonight, and there’s a lot of police out. So we’re closing. There’s a bar around the corner that’s open.”

We called it a night soon thereafter, but not before a ride back to our hotel that rattled me. I’ve been in New Orleans for every imaginable event: Super Bowls, NBA All-Star Games, March Madnesses, Essence Festivals and everything in between. I have never seen a police presence throughout the city like I did on the night of NBA Youngboy’s October 19 concert. 

There were police trucks on every corner of Canal Street and even more on Poydras Street, which runs parallel. Officers had their lights on and roamed between each vehicle, looking into cars. It felt like a war zone — a war zone without a war.

If you’re reading this and you’re older than, say, 30, you may have never heard a single NBA Youngboy song. And that’s fine. He’s the patron saint of what gatekeepers and old heads would call “mumble rap” — MCs harmonizing their lyrics into something of a slurred speech that is the antithesis of the rappers of yore hitting every syllable with a verbal sledgehammer.

His music probably isn’t for those of us who came up on Rakim or even A$AP Rocky, for that matter. But it doesn’t really matter; Youngboy has harnessed his vulnerability, myth-making, and authenticity to become a deity for teens and 20-somethings, who hang on his every word.

Born Kentrell Gaulden in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1999, NBA Youngboy was raised by his grandmother, who passed away when he was 11, group homes where he survived abuse and beatings, and his friends — all while his biological father is serving a 55-year prison sentence. NBA Youngboy channeled his childhood into his music, releasing his first project, a 2015 mixtape called Life Before Fame. And he just…never stopped.

Over the past decade, NBA Youngboy has released more than two dozen mixtapes and eight studio albums, which means every few months his rabid fans have new music to feed their obsessions. Each project brought a new level of popularity — and platinum certifications. Just going by traditional metrics, Youngboy is one of the biggest rap artists of the past decade. He’s gone platinum 10 times and has the record as the youngest artist (22) to have 100 songs on the Billboard 100. But, that doesn’t tell the full story of how he’s reaching his fans.

Gen Z is the YouTube generation, particularly in terms of how they consume and discover music. And NBA Youngboy is the site’s crown jewel. He was the most-streamed American artist on YouTube from 2019 to 2023 — yes, more than Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, Taylor Swift and Drake. He also understands the importance of meeting the audience where they are: So much of Youngboy’s music is released exclusively on YouTube.

But beyond the music, to know NBA Youngboy is to have an intimate understanding of his personal life. Each year of his career is like its own telenovela. There are multiple arrests and jail stints, and feuds with other rappers like King Von and Gucci Mane. There are the eight mothers of his 10 kids, and all the drama that entails. Trying to catch up on it all is like trying to jump into Game of Thrones in its third season, struggling to parse together all the players and storylines. But his fans? They know it all.

A few things his fans explained to me as they talked about his music:

• He’s channeling emotions from the loss of his maternal grandmother at an early age.
• All of the motivations and characters that led to his feud with King Von, and Von’s subsequent killing by a member of Youngboy’s team.
• The notion that NBA Youngboy’s longtime partner and mother of his child has an on-again-off-again relationship with an NBA player, but comes back to Youngboy when she misses him.

And they’re deeply familiar with Youngboy’s legal issues, of which there are multitudes.

He was charged with attempted murder in 2016, which was pleaded down to aggravated assault and a suspended 10-year sentence. In 2019, someone opened fire on Youngboy and his crew in Miami, injuring his girlfriend. His crew returned fire, and a bystander was killed by a stray bullet. While his entourage was able to claim self-defense, Youngboy was found in violation of his parole by hanging out with people who were a part of the special conditions of said parole.

More parole violations, court cases and charges resulted in house arrest in his secluded Salt Lake City, Utah, home, which kept Youngboy out of public spaces pretty much since the pandemic. And yet his popularity has never waned. In fact, the legal drama and feeling that he’s being withheld from his fans have only made them more rabid for his return.

NBA Youngboy’s music speaks directly to his fans. 

While Youngboy has been labeled as the ringleader of new-age violent lyrics, the truth is his music isn’t any more violent than Generation X’s NWA or my millennial generation’s DMX. And to say his popularity is based on violence is to tragically simplify his appeal. NBA Youngboy also makes introspective, revealing and, at times, deeply sad music.

For every song about shooting a rival or gangsta rap bravado, there’s a “Death Enclaimed” where he croons, “I’m in that Bentley, me and my youngest son/ He too young to understand, but we still having our one-on-ones/ Ecclesiastes, I told him everything done under the sun. They’ll kill you when you speak the truth, thug you when you playin’ dumb.”

There’s true agony in so many of Youngboy’s lyrics. His aesthetics and the 808s he raps over scream Southern hip-hop, but his lyrics and the way he sings his heart out give down South blues. He’s as much Muddy Waters and Kurt Cobain as he is Young Thug and Kevin Gates. And therein lies the connection with a fanbase that hasn’t had a chance to see him live since they were in high school. It’s a fanbase who spent their formative years surviving the very worst society has had to throw at them — from Covid-based societal collapse and genocidal images on their social media timelines, to a disenchantment with the idea that doing the right thing will make their dreams come true.

We’ve failed these young folks. And when NBA Youngboy yells, “I’m just a lonely child who wants someone to help him take this pain away,” he sounds like the only damn person who is listening and understands them.

So imagine yourself, a 20-something who finally gets to see your favorite artist — your GOAT (Greatest of All Time) — in concert after growing up with his music. How would you act?

The first viral clip of NBA Youngboy’s MASA (Make America Slime Again) show popped up in early September, a few days into the tour. The video was taken from inside an arena, and showed a section of Black kids losing their minds. They were waving their lime green (slime) flags, some were bare-chested and waved their shirts in the air. Others wore ski masks. All of them recited every lyric with veins popping out of their necks. They were in the aisles, hanging off the railings. The video’s caption simply said, “Yeah, I’m calling the authorities.”

That was all it took for the NBA Youngboy tour to become synonymous with violent kids. Two weeks later, popular comedian Mark Phillips posted a skit called, “How security gotta be at Youngboy concerts,” depicting a security guard being beaten up by fans with other security guards acting like they’re in a horror movie. The video has almost 2 million views.

Ironically, that same night, another video went viral, this time from inside a Youngboy concert in Kansas City, Missouri. The video shows a 14-year-old kid beating up a 66-year-old arena employee who allegedly tried to tell the teen to move to his correct seat. The video and news stories were covered nationally — the video was captured by Kansas City pastor Robert McDaniel, known also for his own viral social media videos often depicting violence in Black communities and promoting right-wing talking points and politics.

“I’m trying to show how emotional these kids are,” McDaniel told Kansas City’s Fox4 television station. “I’ve been going to the juvenile halls for years mentoring these kids, and they’ve progressively gotten more and more emotional.”

McDaniel did not respond to my requests for comment. 

After Kansas City, NBA Youngboy’s Chicago show was canceled. In October, during his Atlanta show, he performed “I Hate Youngboy,” a song that dissed, among others, popular Atlanta rappers like Gucci Mane and Lil Baby. His scheduled show in Atlanta the next night was canceled. 

New Orleans was the next stop. Police were on every corner, buildings cleared out and some establishments closed down. However, after the show, the NOPD announced the event went off without any violence. Michael Pickett, the Birmingham, Alabama chief of police, visited New Orleans to get pointers on how to keep his city safe when Youngboy rolled into town. Birmingham also had no incidents. Neither did Houston. In fact, I called around to police departments on Youngboy’s tour stops and could only find one incident, in Kansas City, Mo., that resulted in violence.

When the second Atlanta show was canceled, thousands of fans gathered outside of Mercedes-Benz Stadium to sing along to Youngboy’s music in his absence. Again,with no reported incidents. 

Yet, the facts don’t really matter here. From the worry over NWA playing “F— the Police” in the late 1980s to now, there’s been a longstanding, and often misguided, association between gatherings of rap fans and violence. And while this is easily a facet of anti-Blackness, sadly the call is coming from inside the house. Or, more appropriately, from inside the arena. The previously-mentioned “Yeah, I’m calling the authorities” video was spread across Black social media outlets, promoting the notion that something unruly was happening at NBA Youngboy’s shows.

Which is why I had to go see for myself. 

In the nosebleeds, surrounded by diehard NBA Youngboy fans, I wanted to feel what was happening, and not through a social media video either. I’d been familiar with Youngboy’s following and prepared myself for the energy in the crowd. But the previews didn’t do it justice.

As soon as Youngboy hit the stage, I heard a crowd that was louder than any I’d heard, maybe ever, in an arena. And yes, I saw Beyoncé this year in an 80,000-seat stadium. NBA Youngboy’s concert was like if you took 20,000 of the most diehard of those Beyoncé’s, injected Red Bulls into their veins, and told them they had to sing every lyric to save their lives. Youngboy isn’t just popular for a rapper, the passionate reaction to just his presence is among the biggest you’ll see from any artist right now. 

From the moment the concert began, the crowd moved as one. From “Nevada” to “Renada” to “Kacey Talk,” a song about his son, the crowd immediately recognized every track, screaming at the top of their lungs, looking at their neighbor to make sure they recognized the song, nod in a shared moment, then proceed to recite every single line with all the energy in their souls.

There was one kid who told me that he loved Youngboy for his story. “Look at what he’s been through,” he said. “Just from coming up to all the arrests and he puts it all in the music, ain’t nobody realer.”

When “No Smoke” came on, that same kid started screaming directly into his iPhone, the receiver centimeters from his lips, his voice cracking as he harmonized with the hook. I’m not sure his camera was even catching Youngboy on stage. It doesn’t matter. The spirit has taken over. My eyes left the kid and I took in the entire arena. Everyone was in this same trance.

NBA Youngboy himself isn’t really the main attraction as he is mostly listless, meandering across the stage rapping over his own vocals. In his defense, he’s talked about dealing with social anxiety. The real show is the crowd. Their synchronized singing, the way they film Youngboy, then turn their phones around to film themselves for social media or their own personal memories, the communal reactions to their mutual GOAT gracing them with their presence.

In the same way that it’s worth attending a Bad Bunny concert for the show, even if you don’t understand the lyrics, an NBA Youngboy concert is worth it for the mere energy in the building, even if you yourself don’t understand the appeal. 

Because for one night in Houston, I saw something I haven’t seen in a long time among a generation after me: unabashed joy. 

Which brings me back to that viral video.

Too often, we police the notion of Black Joy. Black kids can be joyful, but only if they’re enjoying life in a way that the rest of us understand or deem worthy. However, those kids in the video, the kids in Houston, and the kids across the country are joyfully enjoying music that speaks to them.

I saw grown men squeal in joy when Youngboy hit the stage. I don’t know where they came from to get to the show, where they’re going after the show and what their lives entail overall. But I know that I saw a bunch of music fans reciting lyrics that burrowed into their spines and shot out of their bodies like rockets. I saw kids who didn’t care about charts, streams, or record labels. Kids that didn’t give a f— about what anyone else thought. They cared about the music, and they sang to it like tomorrow wasn’t promised.

And I hate to break it to you, but there’s nothing more hip-hop than that.

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