Kentrell

Kentrell DeSean Gaulden (born October 20, 1999), known professionally as YoungBoy Never Broke Again (also known as NBA YoungBoy or simply YoungBoy), is an American rapper.

Kentrell DeSean Gaulden was born on October 20, 1999, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

He broke his neck while wrestling as a toddler, the injury requiring a head brace until the spine healed.

The brace left permanent scars on his forehead.

Gaulden was raised mainly by his maternal grandmother, Alice Gaulden, due to his father being sentenced to 55 years in prison.

He dropped out of high school in ninth grade.

While in juvenile detention for a robbery charge, he began writing lyrics for his debut project.

After he was released, Gaulden's grandmother died of heart failure in 2010 and he was sent to a group home in which he noted that he would get beat up:

"I used to get beat up inside the group home for no reason, the other boys would put their hands on me, and I would look up like, 'Why are you hitting me, bro? What'd I do?' It made me discover another side of me that I never glorified or liked. I found out how to be the person that you don't want to do that with. [Before then], I never understood all the evilness or wrong because I was showered by so much love from this one person."

He later moved in with his friend and fellow Baton Rouge rapper, OG3Three Never Broke Again.

The two then used acts of criminality to begin to pay for studio time.

Gaulden first began producing music with a microphone he bought from Walmart when he was fourteen years old.

From 2015 to 2017, he released eight independent mixtapes and garnered a regional following for his work.

He signed with Atlantic Records in the latter year to release the singles "Untouchable" and "No Smoke", of which marked his first entries on the Billboard Hot 100.

In January of the following year, his single "Outside Today" became his first to reach the top 40 of the chart and received quadruple platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

He released his first mixtape, Life Before Fame in 2015.

A string of other mixtapes followed including Mind of a Menace, Mind of a Menace 2, and Before I Go.

Despite his success, Gaulden's career has been marked by a long history of legal issues that began in 2016.

He has maintained a largely prolific output nowithstanding of his incarcerations.

Gaulden attracted attention with his October 2016 mixtape, 38 Baby which featured fellow Baton Rouge natives, Boosie Badazz, Kevin Gates, and fellow rappers Stroke Tha Don and NBA 3Three.

A week later, Gaulden released another mixtape titled Mind of a Menace 3 on November 4, 2016. Gaulden's quick rise to popularity could also be attributed to his "song-for-song rap beef" with fellow Baton Rouge rapper Scotty Cain in December 2015, in which songs from both rappers included death threats.

Although no real violence ever occurred between the two Baton Rouge rappers, their feuding attracted a lot of attention.

In November 2016, Gaulden was arrested in Austin, Texas on suspicion of attempted first-degree murder in connection with an alleged drive-by shooting.

While in jail in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, Gaulden re-released his two mixtapes, Before I Go and Mind of a Menace 3.

Gaulden was released from prison in May 2017 after taking a plea deal and posting bail.

A week after leaving prison, Gaulden released the single, "Untouchable".

In July 2017, Gaulden released a video for his song, "41", that included cameos from notable artists including, Meek Mill, Young Thug, 21 Savage, Boosie Badazz, and Yo Gotti.

In August 2017, it was reported that after being scouted by Mike Caren, YoungBoy signed a five-album record deal worth $2 million with Caren's Artist Partner Group and Atlantic Records while the music had been published under YoungBoy's own Never Broke Again.

On August 3, 2017, he released his seventh mixtape, AI YoungBoy which charted at 24 on the Billboard 200, marking YoungBoy's first appearance on the chart.

The single, "Untouchable", peaked at number 95 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

The second single from the project, "No Smoke", peaked at number 61 on the Billboard Hot 100.

YoungBoy's eighth mixtape, Ain't Too Long was released on October 7, 2017.

The mixtape peaked at #173 on the Billboard 200 chart, marking YoungBoy's second appearance on the chart.

It served as both his mainstream breakthrough and the lead single for his debut studio album Until Death Call My Name (2018), which peaked at number seven on the US Billboard 200 despite mixed critical reception.

His 2019 single, "Bandit" (with Juice Wrld) became his first song to reach the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100.

In the following week, he released the commercial mixtape AI YoungBoy 2 (2019), which debuted atop the Billboard 200.

The release of its follow up, 38 Baby 2 (2020) and his second album, Top (2020) made Gaulden the first rapper to peak the chart thrice within a year.

Released during an incarceration, his third album, Sincerely, Kentrell (2021) likewise peaked the chart and became the third project—behind Tupac Shakur's Me Against the World (1994) and Lil Wayne's I Am Not a Human Being (2010)—by an imprisoned artist to do so.

His fourth album, The Last Slimeto (2022) peaked at number two on the chart and served as his final release with Atlantic.

Gaulden then signed with Motown to release his fifth and sixth albums, I Rest My Case (2023) and Don't Try This at Home (2023), which were met with trailing critical and commercial reception.