YoungBoy Never Broke Again on Apple Music (2024)

Top

One of YoungBoy Never Broke Again’s most popular songs is “Outside Today,” from 2018’s Until Death Call My Name Reloaded, in which he takes great pains to explain just how much he doesn’t want to leave the house. If Top, the second YoungBoy offering of 2020’s quarantine period, tells us anything about the Baton Rouge MC, it’s that solitude is clearly still the preferred vibe. The MC sounds like he’s in a great space across songs like “Kacey Talk,” which features his infant son, and also “Callin,” a song where YoungBoy—paired with maybe the perfect guest, Snoop Dogg—works through his own very relatable need for weed. He’s sharper-tongued on “Murder Business,” a quick reminder that life is the cost of disrespect, but reveals himself sensitive on “All In,” rapping: “Hope God put loyalty in all my friends/’Cause lord knows that I got they back till the end.”

AI YoungBoy 2

It’s fitting that events which, for other artists, might serve as career-defining achievements seem to happen, for YoungBoy Never Broke Again, in media res. In 2019, AI YoungBoy 2 became the Baton Rouge firebrand’s first No. 1 album. Only it wasn’t the result of a months-long promotional campaign, carefully rolled out to maximize exposure. In fact, it wasn’t even an album—it was a mixtape without a hit single, marketing gimmick, or any press campaign to speak of. Even its title, which refers back to his 2017 breakout project, suggests that this is not designed to welcome in the uninitiated. And yet it serves as evidence of the way YoungBoy’s pain music connects with audiences on an almost spiritual level. How else to account for the way his tales of crime and vengeance in Baton Rouge—seldom given enough breathing room to appeal to voyeurs—have helped to make him one of the biggest rappers of his generation? The sorrow and longing YoungBoy is able to communicate in the tone of his voice alone transform verses that would otherwise be diaristic into rallying cries. Take the downtrodden “Make No Sense,” where a complaint that is hyperspecific to YoungBoy’s life—in this case, that he can’t stand outside the trap house anymore because his face has graced too many magazine covers—is made emotionally legible, not a boast but a confession. From the time he exploded with the original AI YoungBoy, the artist has moved fluidly between rapping and singing, often to superb effect. But on “Slime Mentality,” he takes this a step further, seemingly prepared to rap, sing, or simply speak the next thing that comes to mind. This suggests an invigorating formlessness, one that might accommodate the messier thoughts coursing through YoungBoy’s head. But by the song’s finish, it has cohered into something nearly pop—a magic trick from a city, in YoungBoy’s telling, that has run out of magic.

Decided 2

2023

Richest Opp

2023

Don't Try This At Home

2023

I Rest My Case

2023

3860

2022

Ma’ I Got A Family (A Gangsta Grillz Special Edition Hosted by DJ Drama)

2022

3800 Degrees

2022

YoungBoy Never Broke Again Essentials

A Baton Rouge prodigy whose pain runs deep.

YoungBoy Never Broke Again Video Essentials

Wwyd - Single

2024

LLOGCLAY - Single

2024

Boat - Single

2024

We shot him in his head huh - Single

2024

No Time - Single

2024

Steppa - Single

2024

Closed Case - Single

2024

Lost Files

2022

ENGINE (feat. YoungBoy Never Broke Again) - Single

Lil Mabu

Swear (feat. YoungBoy Never Broke Again) - Single

J.K. Mac

FYN (feat. YoungBoy Never Broke Again) - Single

Tre Savage

First Day Out (Freestyle) [Youngboy Edition] [feat. YoungBoy Never Broke Again] - Single

Rundown Spaz & Rundown Choppaboy

First Day Out (Freestyle) [Youngboy Edition] [feat. YoungBoy Never Broke Again] - Single

Rundown Spaz & Rundown Choppaboy

CRAZY GIRL P2 (feat. YoungBoy Never Broke Again) - Single

Bktherula

Won't Back Down (feat. YoungBoy Never Broke Again) - Single

Bailey Zimmerman & Dermot Kennedy

YoungBoy Never Broke Again

2018’s “Valuable Pain” and Realer were a hint of things to come.

January 15, 2018

Music by Jaden Smith, YoungBoy Never Broke Again, and Lophiile.

NBA YoungBoy

Plus, Jim-E Stack and KiD3RD.