YoungBoy Never Broke Again

Raised by his grandmother in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, YoungBoy Never Broke Again (born Kentrell DeSean Gaulden in 1999) started recording with a supermarket-bought microphone as a teenager, writing tracks for his early mixtapes while in juvenile detention. It’s a path that would continue to cast shadows on his career. After a flurry of increasingly strong mixtapes (most notably 2017's AI YoungBoy), Gaulden made his major-label leap with 2018’s Until Death Call My Name, only to be derailed by further arrests. He bounced back later in the year with a string of similarly titled EPs (4Respect, 4Loyalty, 4Freedom, 4WhatImportant) that continued to chart his sound, featuring collaborations with Young Thug and Kevin Gates. Aggressive but soulful, Gaulden’s music feels like a natural step in the evolution of Louisiana hip-hop, echoing both Boosie Badazz (a collaborator) and Gates (who went so far as to get a tattoo of Gaulden’s face) as well as the serious, sing-songy feel of classic Cash Money. Speaking to The FADER in 2017, Gaulden described the pressure he felt to succeed—for his family and for himself. “I can see, I can hear, I can smell, I can speak, I can touch,” he said. “Ain’t no excuses.” In the 2020s, YoungBoy charged ahead with projects like Top, Sincerely, Kentrell, The Last Slimeto, I Rest My Case and Don't Try This At Home, among others. With each release, he adds to a catalogue defined by raw emotion—an explosion of feeling his fans are happy he never learned to control.