lil yachty ethnic background

Is Lil Yachty Christian? Religion Ethnicity And Origin

Is Lil Yachty Christian? Discover this American rapper’s religion, ethnicity, and origin.

Miles Parks McCollum is professionally known as Lil Yachty.

Lil Yachty has established himself as a versatile American artist, encompassing roles as a rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and actor.

Yachty’s journey to fame began in 2015 when he garnered significant attention on the internet with the release of his singles “One Night” and “Minnesota,” the latter featuring Quavo, Skippa Da Flippa, and Young Thug.

These tracks were part of his debut EP titled “Summer Songs.”

Subsequently, in March 2016, Lil Yachty unveiled his debut mixtape, aptly named “Lil Boat,” which further solidified his presence in the music industry.

Notably, in June 2016, Yachty made a pivotal announcement about entering into a joint venture record deal with Motown, Capitol Records, and Quality Control Music, marking a significant milestone in his career trajectory.

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Is Lil Yachty Christian? Religion, Ethnicity And Origin Explained

Lil Yachty is a rapper who will be 26 years old in 2024, born on August 23, 1997.

Born in Mableton, Georgia, United States, Lil Yachty’s diverse heritage shapes his identity.

Yachty’s father is of African-American descent, while his mother is Caucasian, reflecting the rich tapestry of his family’s background.

People were wondering if Lil Yachty was Christian.

Regarding religious beliefs, Lil Yachty adheres to Christianity, which plays a significant role in his life and perspective.

It’s important to note that his nationality is distinctly American, further highlighting his connection to the culture and society of the United States.

Meet Lil Yachty sister, Nina

Lil Yachty’s younger sister, Nina, has made a name for herself as a model and stylist, carving out a niche for her unparalleled passion for fashion.

Nina’s association with renowned companies such as Adidas, Nike, and Calvin Klein has solidified her position in the fashion world.

Nina has also cultivated a substantial social media following, primarily due to her distinctive fashion sense and artistic vision.

Yachty’s sister consistently shares her latest fashion discoveries and sources of inspiration with her engaged online community.

Beyond her endeavors in the fashion realm, Nina possesses a notable talent in the music sphere.

Nina has ventured into the music industry under the alias Nenjah, releasing several singles on SoundCloud that exhibit her prowess as a rapper and singer.

Notably, Nina has collaborated with her brother, Lil Yachty, on multiple tracks, including notable titles such as “Pretty” and “Up Next 2,” further highlighting the creative synergy within their family.

Lil Yachty net worth

Over several years, Lil Yachty has accumulated a substantial net worth exceeding $8 million , a testament to his remarkable success in the music industry.

This financial achievement can be primarily attributed to his lucrative record sales, highly profitable concert tours, and lucrative brand endorsements that have come his way.

At present, Lil Yachty is affiliated with the independent label Quality Control Music, a professional partnership that has further fueled his rise to stardom.

Additionally, the rapper has actively engaged in numerous collaborations, collaborating with renowned artists such as D.R.A.M., Stefflon Don, KYLE, and many others.

These collaborative efforts have expanded his artistic horizons and contributed significantly to his growing wealth.

Looking ahead, as Lil Yachty’s career continues to unfold and evolve, it is widely anticipated that his net worth will experience further expansion, solidifying his status as a financial success story in music and entertainment.

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Hello! I am Rakshya Shrestha, a nurse by profession. With a passion for language and a keen eye for detail, I create content that informs and entertains people. Join me on this journey of words, as we explore new horizons together.

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How Lil Yachty Got His Second Act

By Jeff Ihaza

Until the pandemic, Lil Yachty never stopped to think about how quickly he became famous. “It was a full year from walking across the stage in high school to then I’m in this penthouse in midtown Atlanta , I got this G-wagon, put my mother in a house,” Yachty explains. “It’s a fast life. You not ever getting the chance to think about a lot of shit.”

Yachty’s 2016 hit “Minnesota,” which had the treacly energy of a nursery rhyme, earned the then-17-year-old the title “King of the Teens.” But since then, he’s become an elder statesman of a certain brand of young superstar — and something like the Gen Z answer to Diddy. He collaborated with brands like Nautica and Target; he appeared in the movie How High 2 ; he signed an endorsement deal with Sprite. Signees to his new label imprint, Concrete Boys, even get an iced-out chain.

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Born Miles Parks McCollum, Yachty embodies many of the ways the music industry has changed in the past decade. He rose to fame on the internet and commands attention with or without new music. Over Zoom in March, he’s calm and reserved, pausing intently before he responds to questions. The youthful exuberance is still there, though. At one point, his mom, who lives nearby, calls to ask what he wants from the grocery store. “I need Pop-Tarts,” he says sweetly. “I really want them cinnamon-bun Pop-Tarts.”

He can afford lots of Pop-Tarts. Yachty reportedly made $13 million on endorsements in 2016 and 2017. (“Work hard, play hard,” he responds when asked about the number.) He spends more than $50,000 a month on various expenses, according to one recent headline. (“If anything I pay a little more. I have many assets and insurance, plus an elaborate payroll.”) He’s working on a Reese’s Puffs cereal collaboration, a film based on the card game Uno, and he was one of the first rappers to hop on the crypto craze, selling something called a “YachtyCoin” last December in an auction on the platform Nifty Gateway. According to a report from Coinbase, the token sold for $16,050. Yachty explains that when he was first discovered by Quality Control records founder Kevin “Coach K” Lee, “one of the biggest things he talked about was being a brand. Being bigger than just an artist — being a mogul.” 

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In fact, collaboration has come to be a useful tool for Yachty as he sheds the King of the Teens title for something more akin to a rap mogul. “I only work with people I have friendships with, who I really admire,” Yachty says. “And I love working with newer artists, up-and-coming artists.”  Within the world of hip-hop, Yachty has found for himself somewhere between a megastar and internet hero, and it would appear that he’s just settling in. “I just fuck with new talent. Not even like, ‘let me sign you, get under my wing,’ ” he explains. “Just ‘hey, I’ve been in this spot before. I know what that’s like, bada bing, bada boom.’ ”

Yachty started Concrete Boys last year. One of the first signees was his childhood friend Draft Day, who offers one of the more exciting features on Lil Boat 3, on the cut “Demon Time.” “I feel old sometimes,” Yachty admits. “I feel old as fuck when someone’s popping and I don’t know who they are. Which is rare, because I be on my shit.”

Yachty is also at the forefront of a new realm of social platforms, namely Twitch and Discord, that engender more direct communication within communities. Yachty frequently talks directly to fans on both platforms, and in April he collaborated with Discord on “sound packs,” which allowed users to replace the app’s normal notifications with sounds he created. 

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I ask Yachty where he sees himself in five years. “Hopefully, a really successful actor,” he responds. “And with a bangin’ eight pack. I’ll probably cut my hair up, maybe a little beard. Real sex-symbol shit, you know what I’m saying?” For Yachty, who opened the door to a new brand of celebrity rapper, it doesn’t register as wishful thinking. His enduring celebrity is proof of what’s possible with a solid flow and internet savvy. “I just want to do everything. Because I’ve realized I can,” Yachty explains. “I’ve learned the power I have. The only thing stopping me is me, for real.”

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Lil Yachty: The Full Profile

Home » Artist » Lil Yachty: The Full Profile

As someone who would describe himself as more of an artist than a rapper, Lil Yachty burst onto the scene in 2016 after one of his SoundCloud tracks went viral. Since then, his aptitude on social media has kept him afloat and kept the collaboration requests rolling in. But what type of a man is Lil Yachty really, and what does the future have in store for him?

Lil Yachty was born under the name Miles Parks McCollum in Mableton, Georgia. He grew up in Atlanta and was introduced to a life of media production through his father, Shannon McCollum, a well-known photographer. At an early age, he became accustomed to being in front of a camera and was introduced to music of many genres, inspiring him to be someone that didn’t hold to one version of what art could be. His musical influences ranged from the likes of Kanye West and Soulja Boy to Coldplay and Fall Out Boy to classics like the Beatles.  

Growing up, Lil Yachty wasn’t afraid to stand out. He liked fashion, he liked bright colors, and he was bullied for it. But he always knew that his differences were what made him stand apart from others, distinct and memorable instead of fading into the background. He would use that to build his brand and his following. 

Going Viral: A Burgeoning Career

Lil Yachty has been grouped with a new generation of rappers. These rappers gain huge fan bases from social media and achieve fame by going viral off Soundcloud and other media platforms. The longevity of their careers depends on if they can adapt to the new trends and keep their fans while remaining distinctly themselves. 

The Beginning of Lil Yachty, the Artist

In 2015, Miles Parks McCollum decided to move to New York City after living in Atlanta and working at McDonald’s. He stayed with a friend and lived humbly, slowly building up his social media presence and networking skills. This slow pace led to him attending college at Alabama State University for what would only be a short two months, before he decided to move back and fully dedicate himself to cultivating a network of like-minded artists. Thus, Miles McCollum became Lil Yachty.

Going Viral

Lil Yachty got his start on Soundcloud, where his song “One Night” went viral after it was used in a comedy video. With these newfound thousands of eyes on him, he was able to capitalize on his months of hard work networking with fashion personalities and get a job modeling for Kanye West’s 2016 Yeezy show in Madison Square Garden. 

Soon after his modeling exposure, he released his first mixtape Lil Boat , which peaked at 106th on the US Billboard 200. The rest of 2016 was filled with successful collaborations and featuring spots. Two features in particular, on “Broccoli” by DRAM and “iSpy” by Kyle, were extremely well received and were nominated for numerous awards, putting Lil Yachty firmly in the public eye. 

Signing With a Label

Nearly a year after signing a joint record deal with Motown Records, Quality Control Music, and Capitol Records, Lil Yachty released his first full-length studio album, Teenage Emotions, in May of 2017. The album peaked at 5th on the US Billboard 200 and paved the way for two additional studio albums released in 2018, Lil Boat 2 and Nuthin’ 2 Prove respectively. 

Throughout 2019 and 2020, Lil Yachty continued his streak of features and collaborations with other artists until he released his fourth studio album in May of 2020, Lil Boat 3 . The album peaked at 14th on the US Billboard 200, the lowest position of any of his albums. However, the lower ranking of his last album didn’t deter the rapper’s determination at all. In fact, it was seemingly bolstered by the fact that Drake , a man who Lil Yachty has long looked up to and idolized, featured on one of Lil Yachty’s Lil Boat 3 tracks, “Oprah’s Bank Account.” 

Image and Musical Style

A unique figure in the crowd, Lil Yachty has long said he doesn’t want to be put in a mold, stuck in one genre or image. He wants to be considered an artist more than a rapper. 

When Lil Yachty broke out on the scene, he was instantly recognizable for his brightly dyed red hair with beads, usually styled artfully in his face. However, 2020 saw the rapper ditch the red braids for his natural black color. Although some fans tried to analyze it as a sign of a turn to darker tones in his music, Lil Yachty has maintained that (much like Ariana Grande) his new hair is due to the strain that the red dye had on his hair, causing it to not grow correctly and to even fall out. So yes, the red dye is gone, but he still maintains his braids and beads. 

Although Lil Yachty once was well known for his sparkling grill, nowadays, you’ll see him rocking a pair of very expensive veneers, as has been the trend for social media stars in 2020. 

As someone who has deliberately kept a more mysterious and yet still open persona, Lil Yachty doesn’t have a specific style. Or, at least he won’t share it. He seems to be open to all types of fashion but isn’t one to follow specific trends. He does what he feels looks and feels right in the moment, whether it be matching his beads to his clothes or admiring crop tops on men. 

For a man with such a unique combination of influences, styles, likes, and dislikes, defining him is actually very straightforward. He’s easygoing. This easygoing nature is what has appealed to his fans for so long. He’s humorous, fun, and distinctly lighthearted, a recipe for success on social media. 

Musical Style

Early on in his career, Lil Yachty’s music was disregarded by established rappers who thought his generation of Soundcloud rappers wasn’t authentic or real to the genre. He was accused of being style over substance, with his rap style specifically being called “ mumble rap .”

These early criticisms didn’t seem to phase Lil Yachty much, as he had long wanted himself to be genre-defying with his music anyways. He rejected restrictions of what people consider to be real rap. As his fanbase is mainly young like him, he wants to remain relatable, wholesome even, wanting to rap more about teenage life than alcohol and drugs. In fact, in his early days, he claimed to not like the taste of alcohol or the effects of drugs, saying he didn’t need either in his life. 

Lil Yachty has described his music as “happy bubblegum trap” and “boat music,” an interesting choice of description since three of his four albums are named Lil Boat 1 , Lil Boat 2 , and Lil Boat 3 .

He wants his music to be fun and genre defying. To that end, he raps about video games and samples music and themes from cartoons to include in his songs. Lighthearted and fun, Lil Yachty doesn’t want his music to be a copy of rappers before him; he wants to be distinctly unique. An artist more than a rapper, a recognizable brand above all else. 

Accomplishments

With 14 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 Songs, four full studio albums, and a fervent young fan base founded on social media, Lil Yachty is quickly blazing a path in the music industry. He continues to reap the rewards of his hard-won networking skills, collaborating with dozens of rappers and producers – some up and coming, while others are people he has admired for ages. In 2016, he even appeared in a Sprite commercial with Lebron James, expanding his network even further beyond artists in the music business.  

Lil Yachty has appeared in three movies: Life-Size 2: A Christmas Eve , Long Shot , and How High 2 . He has also done voice work in one animated movie: Teen Titans Go! To the Movies . 

Awards – Songs

“Broccoli” by Dram featuring Lil Yachty

• 2017 Billboard Music Awards nominations for top rap collaboration, top rap song, and top audio streaming song 
• 2017 MTV Video Music Awards nominations for best hip hop video and best collaboration. 
• 2017 Grammy nomination for best rap/sung collection. 

“iSpy” by Kyle featuring Lil Yachty

• 2017 MTV Video Music Awards nomination for best visual effects.
• 2017 MTV Europe Music Awards nomination for best video. 

Awards – Personal

• 2017 iHeartRadio Much Music Video Awards nomination for best new international artist.  

Personal Life

Although he gained fame through social media, Lil Yachty’s personal life has been fairly quiet when compared to the blatant over-exposure of other artists and influencers. 

Famous Friends and Feuds

At the beginning of his career, Lil Yachty was a part of a group called The Sailing Team, composed of other rappers and producers such as K$upreme, Burberry Perry, and his own sister Kodie Shane. However, since 2019 Lil Yachty has stated that The Sailing Team is no more, claiming that his effort in the group outweighed the rest of their contributions. 

Lil Yachty gained his initial fame from social media. He owes much to it, and yet it has also landed him in controversy and feuds. Most controversy comes from his twitter account, and song lyrics, namely his song “E-ER,” which fans have felt sexualizes a female TikTok star inappropriately. 

One of Lil Yachty’s most famous controversies was a three-day feud with Soulja Boy over a photo and leaked audio. It resulted in a public reconciliation over social media and a few extra thousand followers each for them. 

Issues With the Law

In 2015, Lil Yachty was arrested in Florida for credit card fraud and stayed in jail until he paid a bail of $11,000. He cited the incident as something he never wanted to repeat. However, the dreaded year of 2020 brought more issues with the law in the form of speeding and crashing Ferraris. 

He is also currently being sued for assault and battery following an altercation with a man during the 2019 Rolling Loud festival. 

What’s Next?

Lil Yachty has promised his fans new music for 2021 and has so far released a music video called “ Royal Rumble ,” a collaboration with six other rappers all hailing from Michigan. He also has plans to tour starting in May, with a stop at the Rolling Loud Festival in Portugal in June. 

Beyond music, he will have a role in the upcoming Mattel Films movie based on the game Uno. So far, it is said to be a heist movie based in Atlanta, following Atlanta’s underground hip hop culture. 

Other than that, he stays a constant influence on social media, recently showing off his closet and impressive collection of shoes. As someone who was built on the backbone of social media, the race to stay relevant is ever important to an artist such as Lil Yachty. The music industry held more interest in him in the beginning of his career, as he had skyrocketed so fast and so young into the public eye. However, Lil Yachty still peaks interest and is bound to remain in the game for a while, if at least due to his business skills. 

The Sudden Rise of Lil Yachty | NY Times

They Came From Soundcloud: Lil Uzi Vert and the 6 Rappers Who Could Be Rock Stars | W Magazine

Lil Yachty Drops New Video for Michigan Hip-Hop Posse Cut ‘Royal Rumble’ | Rolling Stone

Lil Yachty | Biography & History | All Music

Lil Yachty Says He Stopped Trying To Promote The Sailing Team Because They Were “Really Lazy” | Genius  

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“I hate being alone. That’s why I like being with my friends: we’ve got energy, we’re social as hell. I’m not 30 or anything — I’m 19.”

It was early June when Lil Yachty said this to my face, the two of us finally finding solitude in his Midtown Manhattan hotel room, moments after he took a FaceTime about an $80,000 watch and just two months since I turned 30. I alerted him to my age, and we both laughed at this mildly awkward moment.

When he said he hated being alone, he wasn’t lying. I had trailed him for the past four days in Los Angeles — in cars, hotels, radio stations, restaurants, recording studios, television studios, and retail stores — always in the company of others. Though I was never able to get him alone during this West Coast stretch, I did leave L.A. understanding his likes and dislikes. If I were ever charged with outfitting his green room, I’d know not to get weed and liquor but Domino’s, soda, and Fruit by the Foot.

I’d seen him be exceedingly polite to his elders, laugh at offensive jokes, talk about girls with the moxy of a kid that just made Varsity, handle business in a manner well beyond his years, and yell at his father over the phone, repeating the phrases “I’m not a child” and “You’re treating me like I’m 12,” the argument lasting for so long that the Beats 1 staff was in a literal standstill, wondering if he’d ever hang up the phone and talk to Zane Lowe.

That uninhibited earnestness, blissful ignorance, and ever-connectedness to the grid makes sense for someone who named his debut album Teenage Emotion , then just a few days from being released. It’s an exhausting, almost campaign-like undertaking — to be the teen. But he’s also almost done. In August, his tour of duty concludes. Lil Yachty turns 20.

Buy the Lil Yachty issue of The FADER , and order a poster of the cover here .

Achieving fame for your movement as much as for your music is, to many, suspicious. Red flags are often raised when the public can’t figure out what they’re being sold, if this new, different thing is real or a joke, if an artist cares about their craft or is trolling for stardom simply because they can. Years ago, when Donald Glover — then just a successful comedian — introduced the world to Childish Gambino , a die-hard fanbase emerged, as did an equally large contingent of haters and skeptics. Some people just didn’t like the music, from his voice to his subject matter, but most of the distrust was due to the assumption that this was nothing more than a vanity project. And when that happens in hip-hop, a notoriously proud universe, it’s often frowned upon.

In the past year, Lil Yachty has been an easy target for those who simply can’t figure him out. While speaking to Zane Lowe, he went on about the music he likes and his inspirations, a list that, seen through a cynical lens, may be random for the sake of being random and, through another, completely understandable. In a matter of minutes, he brought up Nelly and Tim McGraw’s “Over and Over Again,” Baby Bash, “Can You Stand the Rain” by New Edition, Slipknot, Gambino, and Fall Out Boy. When he got to Kid Cudi, he slowed down. Phrases he used to describe his love for Cudi included “relatable for emotional people,” “pioneer,” “dream journeys,” “dope sense of style,” “guardian angel,” and “tour guide.” These are the influences of a rapper who infamously said he couldn’t name five songs by Biggie or Tupac, then doubled down by calling Biggie “overrated.”

Both Funkmaster Flex and Joe Budden — hip hop’s current Statler and Waldorf — have taken issue with Yachty’s way of approaching life, Flex referring to him as a “mumble rapper” and Budden calling shenanigans on Yachty’s incessant positivity. For Budden, a man currently having a career resurgence purely off the strength of being a curmudgeon, Yachty was the perfect target. Unfortunately, it’s hard to win a shouting match against someone who won’t shout back. When Budden brought Yachty on his Everyday Struggle web show and said, “You can’t tell me you wake up every day happy 24/7, because to say that you are lying,” Yachty responded with a soft seriousness: “When you come from living in a dorm room with no clothes, no girls, no cars, and then you go to having three cars, girls, and money, you can’t help but be genuinely happy that things are moving in a positive direction.” As for his response to Funk Flex, a man almost 30 years his senior, Yachty said on Instagram: “I’m just enjoying life countin’ up my change. None of this is that serious to me. Take a chill pill my guy.”

It’s a masterful, near-political dismantling of the old heads, just another thing that makes Yachty a heroic figure to many of his teenage peers and a thorn in the side of many of his rap elders. He is his own spin room, polling phenomenally in his district, even while outside detractors continue to get louder.

Still, inquiries into whether or not it’s all a schtick aren’t without warrant. And the more you keep digging, with the young rapper constantly providing reasons for you to question the seriousness of his professional existence, the more you’re forced to realize that the teens have changed the rules, and the easiest way to get left behind is to get hung up on reality.

Atlanta, Georgia, hosted the Summer Olympics in 1996. A year later, Lil Yachty was born Miles McCollum in Mableton, a northside suburb. He grew up mainly with his mother, but he remembers his father, a prominent hip-hop photographer, playing J Dilla in the house, and fondly calls back the first tape he ever owned: Kris Kross. Yachty’s upbringing was polar, some moments highly relatable, others not even close. While at Pebblebrook High School, his mother made him cut his hair — then long black braids — so he could get a job at McDonald’s. After his tenure of mopping floors began, however, everyone around him started to colorfully style their hair. The result: the Yachty that visually stands out from the pack, his signature mop of red braids now famously adorned with beads that chandelier on his face. At the start of the summer of 2015, he moved himself to New York City, doing what so many others do — trying to get noticed. By August, he was back down South, arrested for credit card fraud.

The arrest proved to be a hurdle, but in no way a roadblock. His ability to make connections proved to be his truest early skill. By February of 2016, his public existence of a few songs, a look, and an Instagram account made it to Kanye West, who put him in his Yeezy Season 3 fashion show. In March, he put out his debut mixtape, Lil Boat, which included the breakthrough hit “Minnesota.” In April, he contributed the catchy opening verse to the D.R.A.M. song “Broccoli,” a radio mainstay. In May, he released the video for “1 NIGHT,” which is like rolling Tumblr, MGMT, Lisa Frank, and Montauk into four minutes of film. That same month, he appeared on Chance The Rapper’s critically adored Coloring Book . Like that, Yachty had arrived — a snowball effect of success.

In June, he did his first interview on New York City’s famed Hot 97, in which many of his ongoing conversation tropes appear: explaining the youth, discussing fans online, debating old vs. new rap, and talking about how much money he’s made in a relatively short amount of time. “Yachty’s always gotten it,” Hot 97 personality Peter Rosenberg told me. “We had to have the old heads conversation, but we liked him personally. He’s wise beyond his years for sure.”

As 2016 trucked along, he made the XXL Freshman list and signed with Quality Control Records, the home of then-rapidly rising trio Migos . By October, Yachty was in a Sprite commercial with LeBron James. Once caught scamming, he was now in a very real position to not only pay for things, but to provide. Yachty, truly a mama’s boy, routinely acknowledges how he “over-spoils” his mother. But it’s clear how much he loves her, and the feeling is mutual. When I was sitting with one of Yachty’s publicists during a photoshoot in New York, she showed me a text from “Mama Boat.” It was a lengthy Flipagram slideshow she made of photos of her son as a child: class pictures, mother-and-son shots, the requisite naked baby photos. It went on for so long I thought I’d blinked and it was actually on a loop. But no. It was still going. Because moms.

Talking about the cuteness of little Lil Yachty was a far cry from how we began. I’d met him for the first time a week earlier, on a Tuesday morning at Los Angeles’s Power 106 radio station, before he was slated to be a guest on The Cruz Show . Within seconds, I was already confused. I extended my hand for a shake and Yachty, his assistant, Nick, and his security, Twan, all opted for the pound. As I followed them into the green room, the three passed around hand sanitizer. None of them had even looked me in the eyes. The first thing I wrote down: “brats.”

The exception was Yachty’s manager, Kevin “Coach K” Lee. Seeing Coach, I lost interest in Yachty. Atlanta is a big city, but damn near microscopic when you have two black people of a certain age both intertwined with the city’s music landscape. Within minutes, our name game had gotten lengthy, and in the green room both Coach and I FaceTimed a mutual friend, DJ Speakerfoxxx. As Coach ended the call, I looked up — Yachty had a different expression for me. Knowing Coach had garnered me a brief smile.

Wiping it quickly away, he found a marker and began writing on a nearby dry-erase board. As a guy from the station came to alert him that it was time to begin, Yachty left a message, seemingly to no one in the room.

“Shout out 2 the vegans.”

I hung back for a second and stared at the board. Yes, this was weird. It felt like I was being baited by a manufactured faux-savant. But it also felt oddly familiar.

Finally entering the studio, Yachty sat in a chair, surrounded by a bounty of candy. Questioned about his food choices, he responded, “I don’t eat fruit.” Who was this kid?

The interview was a buildup for the show’s now-viral, entertaining gimmick: having rappers read the children’s book Llama Llama Red Pajama over a popular beat while throwing in their own ad-libs. Before this happened, however, the hosts told Yachty that there was someone on the phone that wanted to congratulate him on his album. It was Lil B .

“He’s my inspiration,” Yachty said, stunned. “If it wasn’t for him I probably wouldn’t be here.” I thought back to the note he left on the dry erase board.

In 2011, the height of the cult of Lil B, I saw his first show in New York at Hammerstein Ballroom. At one point, after the room full of teens were done throwing their shirts, chef hats, jewelry, shoes, and even a cell phone onstage as offerings to Lil B, he knighted a kid, said “I knighted him,” and declared, “Shout out to all my dudes that got hair on they chest. Shout out to all my dudes that got hair on they butts.”

At the time, the rap world was wildly divided on Lil B: was he a shame or a shaman? Six years ago, I was firmly convinced of the latter, often laughed out of conversations with rap purists for expressing a genuine appreciation for the liberating music and movement of Lil B. And now here I was, an older skeptic of a rapper who came up on Lil B, has a framed picture of Lil B in his Atlanta home, and, while more commercially popular, is essentially Charmeleon to Lil B’s Charmander.

Yachty acknowledged the connection on the show, saying that he admired the way Lil B connected to his fans, made his fans feel as if they knew him and that he cared. But even musically, there’s some connective tissue — lyrical moments of brilliance surrounded by stretches of “What is he talking about?” and “Is he a good rapper?”

Yachty’s process of making music, however, has been lauded by those who have worked with him. Atlanta producer Su$h! Ceej spent time toward the end of 2016 with him, and described studio sessions as “no pressure, all fun, all natural”: “He knows what beats he wants and is very specific with the sound he’s trying to create, freestyling everything at first and fine-tuning as he goes, making a lot of songs in a short amount of time depending on how many pizza breaks or what video games are in the other room.” As for Cleveland’s TrapMoneyBenny , who produced Teenage Emotions ’s final track, “Momma (Outro)” : “He’s one of my favorite people to work with.”

The combination of lyrical question marks, cosigns, and an intense connection to fans are the hereditary traits between The Based God and Lil Boat, resulting in rappers who are both atypical and vulnerable. And for anyone who has a rigid idea of how a rapper should act, it’s uncomfortable.

This connection to his fans trumping all was on full display back at the Beats 1 offices. Yachty sat in a chair, smiling from ear to ear, surrounded by producers and cameras, preparing to FaceTime fans for a segment. He’d just launched into yet another Fruit Roll Up as they waited for a guy named Lars from Norway to answer the phone. Lars never answered. “I get it, my family would murder me if I was talking on the phone at that hour,” Yachty said. “But no lie, if I was Lars, I would have taken that beating.”

The second person picked up. “It is I,” Yachty said. A guy wanted advice about how to find a girl he met in a moshpit at his concert. Instead of giving him a short answer, Yachty earnestly went through the most logical ways to track her down. “Go through the hashtags,” he said. “Or maybe she’ll hear this? You never know.” It was clear this was his happy place: talking to fans. The next caller was a woman. As soon as Yachty popped up, she began to cry. “Ohhhh, don’t cry,” he said, his face playfully scrunching up.

A third caller mentioned that she wished her boyfriend were there, because he’s a huge fan. Yachty suggested that they get his number. The girl was shocked, as was everyone in the room. They got the boyfriend’s number and called him. He freaked out. “Weird, I’ve never called another girl’s boyfriend,” Yachty said in a deadpan.

The entire room, once doing a great job holding back laughter, could no longer contain silence. It was like watching a 19-year-old black, male Delilah, from the calming voice, mild demeanor, extreme comfort as he talked to strangers, and genuine care about people that like him. “That definitely wasn’t the first time I’ve FaceTimed with fans,” Yachty said afterward. “It was just the first time it was recorded. I used to do that shit just for the fun of it.”

He’s not always so positive, though. Just 30 minutes earlier, he was forced to experience the full onslaught of the content machine. Two men talked to him about Musical.ly, a video social network app, while he wore a crown and giant star shades. He wore an unchecked pout on his face. In this moment, I was watching the self-proclaimed champion of youth age out of something.

“Some of that shit is so lame,” he later told me. “I push this ‘king of the teens’ shit, but they be thinking teens like 13. On some super corny, under-underage shit. It happens all the time.”

With each passing day, I became more interested in sitting down privately with him, finding out what he was like once all the distractions disappeared. Yet as we spent more time together, that sit-down also started to feel less essential. Not only was I getting the real him, all the time, but the distractions were never going to disappear.

At first, it was slightly off-putting to watch him seem uninterested in the beginning of interviews and side conversations. Yachty doesn’t necessarily love being on all the time, and his days in a press cycle often involve a great deal of stasis followed by the immediate ask to be Lil Yachty The Rap Star. But the more I saw, his changing moods yet constant effort became increasingly relatable and human — he’d set himself up to be a machine, within the machine.

Maybe Yachty will become a marionette like so many other celebrities, a rapper that promotes more brands than has songs. So far, he’s done a Target ad with the pop singer Carly Rae Jepsen and has a partnership with Nautica , in addition to Sprite. Or perhaps he’ll gravitate in another direction and just be subversive for the sake of drama, another thing he has experience in, from tweeting “fuck J. Cole” to a past beef with Soulja Boy over a fashion model.

Listening to his album Teenage Emotions , it’s an identity crisis. It’s what you expect from someone being pulled in 10 directions at once, caught between youth and adulthood. On “X Men,” arguably the album’s gulliest moment, he still finds a way to do it with a slight wink, ending a verse with, “All of you niggas is marks/ You stinky and dirty like farts.” It’s as if he’s trying to find the right way to rebel, this album showing the various lanes that he might pick: hard and tough, sweet and romantic, young and goofy.

Right now, though, he’s opting out of a singular path, primarily choosing calm and collected. I pushed him on talking about Lil Uzi Vert , for example, with whom a rivalry had been suggested in an earlier radio interview, his answer prompting a clickbait-drenched blog post suggesting there was beef. That bothered Yachty. “Me and Uzi aren’t friends,” Yachty calmly offered. “We used to be cool. It’s not beef, it’s just competition. That’s all it is. We’re not friends.” He says what’s on his mind, and he’s quite personable, eventually. Just sometimes it takes a bit for him to recharge the battery.

The morning after Yachty’s full day of radio, he turned his attention to doing television. And on set in the CBS Studio Center lot, the room just let out a collective gasp. Did Martha Stewart realize what she just said to Lil Yachty, out loud, in front of an entire studio audience? Yachty had just come on stage as a guest on the weed-and-euphemism-filled circus that is Martha and Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party , a VH1 show that often makes SNL’s “What’s Up With That?” sketch look like Catholic mass.

It was clear the only prep Martha received about him was that he didn’t drink or smoke, so she talked to him like an innocent child. When it was time to discuss the Teenage Emotions album cover — an artistic exercise in inclusion — the image was not available. The network hadn’t gotten the image cleared. Taping stopped and the Doggfather stood up, chastising the powers that be for never getting stuff cleared. In a very loud, swear-filled finger wag, Snoop appropriately referred to Yachty’s album cover as “this nigga’s shit.” So Martha, sitting at a table with her co-host, Yachty, comedian Gary Owen, and actress Laverne Cox, leaned over — while wearing a sari for their Indian food-themed episode — and, both maternally and ignorantly, said, “Yachty, does it upset you when Snoop says ‘nigga shit?’”

The room filled with every imaginable reaction: anger, horror, embarrassment, laughter, joy, pain. Throughout the exchange, Martha Stewart did not seem to understand what the big deal was. Yachty’s reaction: a huge smile. It had been a long morning of sitting and waiting, following a day of interviews that involved a great deal of sitting and waiting. Once he finally made it on stage, he was charismatic, but seemed to be running on fumes. When Martha had her record scratch moment, though, Yachty came alive. By the end of the show’s taping, he was playfully running around the stage with Snoop, avoiding a crew of belly dancers that had just brought out a giant yellow snake, in this, a wildly appropriative episode of television.

The taping of the show lasted so long, Yachty missed his next engagement, a meeting at the Grammy offices to become a member. That meant the following stop was Urban Outfitters, to sign posters of his album cover. Pulling up to the Hollywood locale, however, we were early, a fact that puzzled Yachty almost to the point of embarrassment: “Wait, so y’all got me, the rapper, here first?”

It was true — it looked as if no one had come to see him. Twan, his security, countered with, “No, there’s a long line.” Everyone in the car thought this was just him being a supportive friend. But when the van circled the block, a long line snaked through a side alley, causing Yachty’s crew to erupt in laughter. Seconds later, a car drove by playing “Broccoli.”

“Ooh, that’s me,” he said, finishing a pack of M&Ms. Yachty was alive, yet again.

In our time together, the black Sprinter van we travelled in became something of a second home, powerless against the lull of Los Angeles traffic. The swings in his personality were on full display during these rides. Sometimes he was dead quiet, other times chatting on his phone, once or twice making fun of his boys for literally anything. It also was a time for him and Coach to catch up on news, like the moment Coach found out they were being sued over the song “Peek A Boo” by a rapper who made a song titled “Pikachu.”

Coach played “Pikachu” for the van and we all laughed. Yachty seemed a bit nervous, not knowing if this was real or not, but Coach reassured him that it was nothing. The brief back-and-forth was representative of their relationship, less of the typical manager-artist vibe and more super smart kid and wise camp counselor.

“It makes things pretty one-sided sometimes,” Yachty said of Coach. “Like, technically the manager works for the artist. What the artist says goes. But I know Coach always has the best intentions, so sometimes he just tells me what to do. And I don’t really have any say. I mean, I have a say so, but for the most part I don’t really care to say anything.”

The following day was Yachty’s final media jaunt before the release of Teenage Emotions . The excitement began at Mel’s Drive-In, a retro diner in Hollywood. The old-school feel of the restaurant echoed the attire Yachty would be wearing during his performance: a baby blue prom blazer, white tuxedo pants, and a white ruffled shirt a la Randy Watson from Coming To America . The restaurant overflowed with people having meals with their families, plus a scattering of teenagers who knew Yachty was en route. When he walked in, his red beads and camouflage jacket both matching and contrasting, the place became a zoo. Yachty stood on a table in a side patio amid screams of “Fuck Joe Budden” and kids offering him things they brought, from cash to their own shoes.

Yachty’s Lil B moment had come full circle. Attempting to give a speech, his words were drowned out by the throng of screaming fans. Finally, they got quiet and Yachty simply said, “Follow me.”

There were enough fans to fill Hollywood Boulevard, but we walked up the sidewalk. From a distance, it looked as if a young Venus Williams was leading an army with the tactical knowledge of Douglas MacArthur, and the masses were ever-growing. At one point, two teenage girls saw the Million Teen March, ditched their Uber ride, and ran across a busy intersection to join in.

Yachty brought his faithful to the entrance of the Hollywood Masonic Temple, home of the Jimmy Kimmel Show , then disappeared into the building. The mob scene was over, for now. The next few hours involved a soundcheck with the band at the outdoor stage and prep in the green room before the show. Yachty was back to more sitting and waiting, which didn’t bode well for his biggest television performance to date.

But just as his energy began to dip, the one missing piece of the puzzle exploded into his room, as if to make everything right: the Sailing Team .

Yachty’s crew from home had flown in from Atlanta, flooding the green room with bodies, dreads, and hugs just as Yachty prepared to hit the Kimmel outdoor stage. It suddenly felt like a party, and the smile on Yachty’s face was a smile I’d never seen, a smile I’d been waiting on. A pizza the size of an ottoman appeared. It wasn’t Domino’s or Papa John’s, but it was large enough to feed all his boys, so it was perfect. Yachty had all he needed: pizza, candy, and his best friends.

Hours later, after his Kimmel performance, the venue was a hotel ballroom full of pink and lavender balloons, a DJ, a photobooth, a stage, and people dressed up. His day had gotten even better. Yachty threw himself, and his friends and fans, a prom.

Of all the elements I’d watched him hop between in three days, this was Yachty at his best. He and the Sailing Team performed Yachty songs old and new. But, in a move you rarely see, they also rapped along and danced to other people’s songs. Jumping around and throwing water into the crowd, they were simultaneously attending their prom and that of the hired prom band.

And although it took him a little while, right before the buzzer went off on his teenage years, Yachty finally got what he wanted, what he deserved, what he earned. For one night, he was Prom King.

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The Sudden Rise of Lil Yachty

The stylish 19-year-old rapper has made his way from obscurity in Atlanta to working with LeBron James and Kanye West.

Louis Vuitton mohair sweater, about $690, at louisvuitton.com . Gosha Rubchinskiy pants, $310, at Dover Street Market New York. Converse sneakers, $50, at converse.com . Credit... Clement Pascal for The New York Times; Styled by Alex Tudela

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By Joe Coscarelli

• Dec. 9, 2016

After 18 years of trying to get noticed, the rapper and teenage eccentric Lil Yachty has been forced recently to practice blending in. It’s mostly the hair.

On a recent Saturday, following a dayslong spate of promotional appearances and photo shoots, the 19-year-old internet supernova, who found fame online and beyond this year with a series of catchy mixtapes and goofy viral moments, hoped to do a little shopping in the heart of Brooklyn.

But before he could peacefully enter Kith , the streetwear store that specializes in sneakers and sugary cereal , Lil Yachty needed to hide his trademark accessory: his grenadine-red skinny braids adorned with clear plastic beads. As his chauffeured S.U.V. approached the buzzing shop, the Atlanta rapper grabbed a knit cap from the head of a friend, who assented without a word, seemingly familiar with the routine.

It worked. Locks tucked atop his head, Lil Yachty, whose face is usually obscured by the clacking tentacles, proved unrecognizable even to those who may have binged on his whimsical music videos or Instagram account. Like a millennial Clark Kent, he went unbothered in the maw of his target demographic, drawing stares only as he stacked five pairs of shoes and two art books (“Pharrell,” “KAWS”) by the register.

As with the mini-shopping spree, there was still some thrill in needing to go undercover. “At the beginning of this year, I used to walk through the local mall and say, ‘One day, I’m not going to be able to walk through this mall,’” Lil Yachty said later in the privacy of a Caribbean restaurant, his hair since released. “No way I could walk through the mall now. Unless I’m hiding.”

Last winter, the teenager born Miles McCollum, who had recently dropped out of college and had been arrested in a Florida mall for credit card fraud, was hoping to shake his anonymity. Rapping was a relatively new pastime (it still is), though striving for fame came naturally to a diligent student of social networks.

“I always knew I was going to be something,” he said. “I didn’t know what.”

Now, at the end of a career-making 2016, Lil Yachty seems more certain. “I’m not a rapper, I’m an artist,” he said. “And I’m more than an artist. I’m a brand.”

The stats back him up. In addition to releasing the popular “Lil Boat” and “Summer Songs 2” mixtapes, filled with his taffylike digital wails and cartoon melodies, and reaching No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 with his sweet-and-sour guest verse on D.R.A.M.’s “ Broccoli ,” Lil Yachty has modeled Kanye West’s Yeezy line at Madison Square Garden, starred in a Sprite commercial with LeBron James and teamed up with Nautica on a capsule collection for Urban Outfitters. An official debut album with Capitol Records is planned for early 2017.

Yet even among the bevy of singular voices in the new Atlanta hip-hop scene, where male rappers can wear dresses and carry designer bags, moan about their feelings and dance with their hips, Lil Yachty is demonstrably odd, flaunting his indifference to rap traditionalism and aiming to remain somewhat wholesome: more schoolyard than trap house.

“Rappers don’t have endorsements because of their images,” he said. “Endorsement money is huge. And I care about my character.” He added: “I don’t rap about drinking or smoking, ever, because I don’t do it. I don’t rap about anything I don’t do.”

Instead, Lil Yachty preaches an all-purpose positivity fueled by timeless adolescent ambitions: chasing girls, looking cool and hanging out with friends. (Lil Yachty’s crew is known as the Sailing Team : “If you’re a fan of me, then you know my friends, because I push them just as hard.”) His most menacing raps can feel playful, his sexuality disarmingly juvenile and his boasts betray his age: “Parents mad at my ass ’cause their kids sing my song in class,” he taunts while proclaiming himself the King of the Teens. “We are the youth!” goes another battle cry.

As with his breakout viral hits “1 Night” and “Minnesota,” Lil Yachty’s music relies less on technical rapping than on simple melodies that invoke warped nursery rhymes, with bright, bubbly production and an affecting falsetto smoothed with Auto-Tune. Along with Kanye West and Kid Cudi, both of whom count as elder statesmen to someone born in 1997, his most direct influences include the cult-favorite, outre internet rappers Lil B and Soulja Boy, along with pop acts like Coldplay, Daft Punk and Fall Out Boy.

While modeling for Nautica last month to his own personal playlist, Lil Yachty mimed air guitar to “Paradise City” by Guns N’ Roses and boogied to Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets” when he wasn’t belting Chris Martin ballads. Between looks, he dined on his preferred menu of Domino’s pepperoni pizza, candy and cookies, head buried in his two Louis Vuitton-cased iPhones. (One had a hand-scrawled message: “LETS BE RICH FOREVER.”)

At the same time, Lil Yachty’s stated indifference toward the catalogs of Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G. has made him a punching bag for rap purists, the poster child for a style-over-substance new school dismissively dubbed “mumble rap.” He’s leaned into that mantle, so online schadenfreude bubbles up every time Lil Yachty, say, bombs a freestyle over ’90s beats or fails miserably at dunking a basketball .

“I ask myself all the time, ‘How do I always go viral?’” Lil Yachty said with a grin. “I’m the face of the youth, the new sound. Nobody likes my truth.” Except the youth, that is. “They relate to me because I’m so like them,” he said, “but on a global scale.”

Music, it turns out, was something of an afterthought, despite his deep roots in Southern rap. Though he was raised mostly by his mother in the Atlanta suburb Austell, his father, Shannon McCollum, lived in the city and worked as a photographer with local acts such as Outkast, Goodie Mob and Lil Jon. But hanging around stars as a child bolstered Lil Yachty’s sense of style and business acumen more than his sense of hip-hop history.

“I would let him help direct photo shoots, and I would always show him my invoices so he could see what I made,” Mr. McCollum, 46, said. “I used to photograph Miles every week. By 3 or 4, he was so comfortable in front of a camera.”

An obsession with fashion followed. “Once, when he was about 7, we were picking up his friend, and Miles had on a pink polo shirt,” his father recalled. “The little boy got in the back seat and started laughing uncontrollably at Miles, calling him a girl. Miles just said, ‘You don’t know nothing about this, man.’”

In high school, influenced by the bright colors favored by Pharrell Williams and Tyler, the Creator, Lil Yachty would spend the money he earned working at McDonald’s or as an assistant to his father at thrift stores. “Ninety-nine cents, 50 cents, I just knew how to put it together,” he said. His mother even taught him to sew.

His confidence and originality helped to win over his eventual manager, Coach K, an Atlanta stalwart who has worked with Young Jeezy, Gucci Mane and Migos. “It was like your first meeting with Marilyn Manson,” Coach K said of encountering Lil Yachty. “You’ve got this freakish look, but he’s not scared of who he is. He’s wearing it with pride. Instantly I said, ‘This is it.’”

Lil Yachty had already determined that packaging a mystique was his strong suit. After graduating from high school, he traveled repeatedly to New York and Los Angeles — his father’s day job at Delta gave him access to free flights — where he slept on couches and worked to ingratiate himself with rap-adjacent tastemakers like Ian Connor and Luka Sabbat .

“I was simply trying to get people who had an audience to hang out with me, so that I could get that audience,” Lil Yachty said. “I was making music, but I wasn’t really pushing it yet. I knew exactly how it worked.” He corrected himself. “I know exactly how it works .”

Still, even he has been surprised by the speed of his ascent.

“It just feels like a dream,” he said, recalling that in January, he couldn’t make it past the door of Kanye’s studio. “I sat in the hallway for hours while ASAP Rocky was in there. They wouldn’t let me in. By August, I was working with him.” Nautica, too, came calling only after a year of Lil Yachty’s attempting to get the maritime brand’s attention via social media.

It was backstage among the V.I.P.s at Jay Z’s Made in America festival in September that Lil Yachty’s new reality started to sink in. “Obama’s daughters knew who I was,” he said. “They were huge fans. Jay Z said my name to me before I introduced myself.”

And yet, persona aside, a teenager can only be a teenager.

At an Urban Outfitters meet-and-greet in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, among decidedly less dazzling guests, the rapper hid once again behind his hair and phone as overeager young fans offered him anything they could find to autograph: $5 bills, laptops, water bottles, purses, coats and, yes, eventually breasts. Not yet immune to such attention at close range, Lil Yachty could only giggle to himself, shaking his head as he mouthed the words to his own music.

Continue following our fashion and lifestyle coverage on Facebook (Styles and Modern Love ), Twitter ( Styles , Fashion and Weddings ) and Instagram .

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• Birth Name : Miles Parks McCollum
• Country : United States
• Genres : Hip Hop , Trap
• Views : 64,809

Miles Parks McCollum  (born August 23, 1997), better known by his stage name  Lil Yachty , is an American rapper and singer. Yachty first gained recognition in August 2015 for his singles "One Night" and "Minnesota" from his debut EP  Summer Songs .He released his debut mixtape  Lil Boat  in March 2016. On June 10, 2016, Yachty announced that he had signed a joint venture record deal with Quality Control Music, Capitol Records, and Motown Records. His mixtapes  Lil Boat  and  Summer Songs 2  were released in 2016 and his debut studio album  Teenage Emotions  in 2017.

McCollum was born in Mableton, Georgia. In 2015, Miles Parks McCollum adopted the nautical stage name "Yachty" and moved from his hometown of Atlanta to New York City to launch his career. He stayed with a friend and networked with online street fashionpersonalities, while he built up his own Instagram following. Yachty first came to prominence in December 2015 when the SoundCloud version of his song "One Night" was used in a viral comedy video.

In February 2016, Yachty debuted as a model in Kanye West's Yeezy Season 3 fashion line at Madison Square Garden. Yachty's debut mixtape  Lil Boat  was released in March 2016.

In April 2016, Yachty collaborated with D.R.A.M. on the hit song "Broccoli", which peaked at number 5 on the  Billboard  Hot 100. He featured on Chance the Rapper's  Coloring Book  mixtape, released in May 2016. On June 10, 2016 he announced he had signed a joint venture record deal with Quality Control Music, Capitol Records, and Motown Records. Yachty released his second mixtape  Summer Songs 2  in July 2016.

In December 2016, he was featured on the hip hop single "iSpy" by Kyle. He was featured in Tee Grizzley's single "From the D to the A", released in March 2017.

On May 26, 2017, Lil Yachty released his debut studio album, Teenage Emotions. It features guest appearances from Migos, Diplo, Evander Griiim, Grace, Stefflon Don and YG, among others. Three promotion singles were released to co-incide with the track. The album's first promotional single, "Harley", produced by K Swisha, was released on April 14, 2017. The second promotional single, "Bring It Back", produced by Free School, was released on May 4, 2017. The third promotional single, "X Men", produced by 30 Roc and Tillie and featuring a guest appearance from American rapper Evander Griiim, was released on May 18, 2017.

Musical style

Lil Yachty calls his style "bubblegum trap." His songs have sampled sounds ranging from  Mario Bros. , Charlie Brown, the theme from  Rugrats  theme, and the startup sound of a GameCube console. Other themes in his works include clouds, cotton candy, the Super Nintendo, and scenes from Pixar films. His friend Burberry Perry is heavily involved in the production of his songs. Yachty's style has also been described as mumble rap.

Rolling Stone  described his music as "catchy, intentionally dinky-sounding tunes packed with off-color boasts delivered in a proudly amateurish singsong."  The Guardian  called his music "fun, hook-first pop rap oblivious to songcraft and structure that doesn’t take itself too seriously, with very little interest in legacy and even less in rap canon."

Personal life

Endorsements.

Yachty made a guest appearance in a Sprite commercial with Lebron James, where he is seen in an ice cave playing the piano. Lil Yachty was picked to be the face of the new Nautica and UrbanOutfitter collection. Yachty also appeared in the "It Takes Two" video with Carly Rae Jepsen for Target.

Legal issues

On September 1, 2015, Yachty and one other man were arrested at a mall in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida for credit card fraud, Yachty was released after posting a bail bond of $11,000. According to Yachty, the charges were later expunged.

Discography

Main article: Lil Yachty discography

Studio albums

• Teenage Emotions  (2017)

Commercial mixtapes

• Lil Boat  (2016)
• Summer Songs 2  (2016)

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Meet the Members of Lil Yachty’s Concrete Boys Crew

Here’s a breakdown with everything you need to know about each of the members in Lil Yachty’s collective.

Lil Yachty is determined to keep rap collectives alive with his eclectic Concrete Boys crew.

Over the past couple of years, he’s been assembling a collection of artists—Karrahbooo, Camo!, Dc2trill, and Draft Day—who each reflect the new and exciting sound that has been bubbling in the South. 

Draft Day is the first ‘Crete signee who can fit on any type of beat with his chameleonic flow; Dc2trill is the spark plug who injects every track with Southern energy; Camo! has some of the most elite wordplay in the group; and Karrahbooo has emerged as the biggest star so far, with a laid-back personality that matches her effortless flow.

“Concrete [means] you’re just a solid individual,” Draft Day said during an interview with Montreality , explaining what bonds them all together. “You’re truly yourself. You know who you are as a person, at the end of the day. You’re gonna stand tall on whatever you put out into the world, whatever you’re doing. Can’t nobody tell you shit, and you’re just solid.” 

Before Concrete’s first project as a collective It’s Us Volume 1 drops this week, here’s a breakdown of everything you need to know about each of the members in Lil Yachty’s crew.

View this video on YouTube

What songs should I listen to first? “Running Late,” “Box The 40,” “On The Radar Concrete Cypher”

Who is she?

Karrahbooo, a 27-year-old rapper from Atlanta, realized she wanted to pursue rap while working as an assistant for Lil Yachty, before dropping her first song “Money Counter” when he fired her in 2022. At first, her main goal was to be an actor, and as she explained in an interview with Montreality , “I’m only rapping because I saw Boat doing a movie when I was his assistant, and that’s the day I was like, ‘I want to be a rapper,’ because you can just be an actor from being a rapper if you’re fly enough. That’s how Boat did it.” Regardless of what her original dreams were, however, Karrahbooo has become an integral cog in the Concrete Boys machine, earning her place as the most well-known artist in the crew (outside of Yachty) thanks to viral moments like her breakout verse on Concrete’s On The Radar freestyle cypher last year. And her aspirations as an actress can be seen in her cameo in an old Druski skit that resurfaced on social media recently. 

What’s her role in the crew?

The First Lady of the ‘Crete doesn’t rap like any of her male counterparts in the crew. Instead, she adopts a syrupy flow similar to Detroit rappers like Veeze and Babytron who intentionally duck and weave the beat. Her laid-back flow has been getting a lot of people talking lately, because of how drowsy her cadence can sound over upbeat production (like on her most recent release “RIP Follies” ) but her unique style is setting Karrah apart from her peers. In most cases, she knows how to ride the beat at her own effective pace, like on “Running Late,” “Box the 40,” and Concrete’s Christmas cypher, where she lets her cadence flow freely like a meandering river. However divisive she may be, she has more charisma than anyone in the crew and she’s dedicated to being herself, which is her greatest weapon. 

Can you explain this in basketball terms?

If you take her interviews about wanting to be an actor more than a rapper at face value, Karrah is like the Nikola Jokic of the Concrete Boys: she’s a natural bucket, but she’s very nonchalant about the game itself.

What songs should I listen to first? “With You” f/ Lil Yachty, “Swap Her Birk,” “Jet Lag”

Camo! is an Atlanta rapper who has been releasing music since 2019. He met Lil Yachty on the video shoot for “ Split/Whole Time” and the two would connect again a year later when Yachty invited the young rapper to the studio. From there, Camo continued reaching out to his new mentor until eventually falling under the Concrete umbrella around the same time as Karrahbooo in 2022. He has since appeared in several Concrete Boys cyphers and joined Yachty on a collab called “With You” in 2023.

What’s his role in the crew?

Camo raps with a cadence that is often very similar to Yachty’s, but the sound of his voice is smoother and he might have the best technical rapping ability out of anyone in the group. When Concrete needs hard bars on songs like their “ Concrete Cypher,” Camo is always ready to deliver, despite being one of the younger members of the group (his exact age is unclear, but he said he met Yachty in 2022 when he was just starting college, which would make him around 20 or 21 right now). 

He’s lyrically savvy beyond his years, using clever bars to keep Concrete tracks seasoned, making him the scrappy young Rajon Rondo (think ‘08 Celtics era) of the crew.

What songs should I listen to first? “ Grooviest In The World,” “ Fomo,” “Show Me The Money” 

Dc2trill was born in Texas, but he split time between Texas and Alabama for most of his life. He dropped his first song called “PassAround” nine years ago when he was in high school, which helped him gain some regional notoriety. Then he got in contact with Yachty after J Bans reached out and said that Boat was a fan in 2019, before eventually linking up a year later. “We ended up recording a couple songs. He pulled me out of the session and was like, ‘Yo, bro I want to sign you, and I want to help you with your music,” Trill explained in an interview with Tapped In . Dc2trill flew out to Detroit with Yachty while he was working on his Michigan Boy Boat mixtape, and was featured on the legendary “Royal Rumble” posse cut that dropped before the tape in 2021. The two have been working together ever since. 

As the only artist who didn’t grow up in Atlanta, Dc2trill brings a different sound and perspective to the crew, and he’s been releasing music longer than anyone (besides Yachty). His solo music is very impressive, especially his most recent 2023 album, Family Matters, where he was able to pair gritty rhymes and a southern twang with silky jazz samples. The tape already has motion on the streets with tracks like “Grooviest In The World” and “Fomo,” and it’s clear the people are slowly catching up to the talent that he has.

Think of Dc2trill as Warriors-era Andre Iguodala; he might not always be super flashy, but he’s an MVP-caliber player in the framework of his team

What songs should I listen to first? “How Far Will I Go” f/ Lil Yachty, “Popovich Freestyle” f/ Lil Yachty, “Sunday Talkin”

Draft Day was the first artist officially signed to Concrete Boys back in 2021, and the two had already known each other for several years before that. He’s originally from Broward County, Florida, but eventually moved to Atlanta and started making music when he was in high school. He met Yachty around the same time through mutual friends when he was a freshman in high school. “We just built that relationship beyond music, just as a brother,” Draft Day said in an interview with Lyrical Lemonade. “Through the time, he just saw my work ethic, and now we’re here today. He signed me, and we’re here today.” Anyone paying close attention to the Lil Yachty extended universe is familiar with Draft Day through little cameos like when Drake noticed him looking out into the distance during an interview with Yachty and jokingly said, “I’ve just been looking at Draft Day staring off into the sunset, knowing his time is coming.”

Draft Day has a similar flow as Camo!, except he stays on the beat more than his Concrete counterpart, who sometimes intentionally slips in and out of it. His raspy voice and reliable flow help him add a different complexion to the group’s tracks, and hopefully the excitement generated from It’s Us Volume 1 will give him more momentum as he prepares to drop his first full-length solo project since 2019.

Because he’s helped build the collective from the ground up with Yachty, he has an instinctual understanding of how to rap with the other members of the crew and enhance their rhymes, making him the Chris Paul of the team. He’s an assist master, but is still hunting for that big solo moment to crystalize his career. 

View this photo on Instagram

Giovanna Ramos is an Atlanta-based model who formed a close friendship with Lil Yachty after she moved out to Atlanta last year. She’s included in the Concrete Boys family portrait that Yachty recently posted, so we’re including her on this list, and a photo of her gold grills were used as the cover art for Yachty’s “Slide” single art. “I genuinely did not know I was going to be the cover for these projects,” Ramos told Complex about her involvement in the “Slide” visuals. “[Yachty] sent me ‘Slide’ a while back and I kept telling him almost every day like ‘Bro this is my favorite song right now’ and then a few months later he hit me up saying ‘Come over tomorrow, we shooting the video’ and I was super excited.” Gio has been hanging with the crew ever since her involvement on “Slide,” and can be seen in the background of other Concrete artists’ music videos .

Gio doesn’t rap, so she isn’t an artist on the crew, but it’s clear by her inclusion in the family portrait that she’s an important part of Concrete. When you see the ‘Crete, you’ll see her. While Gio doesn’t make music, she provides the swag and energy that every rap collective needs.

Think of her as a player like PJ Tucker: someone who keeps the locker room in check and makes sure the team is staying fly. 

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Let’s Start Here.

“something ether”.

Flex Up (with Future and Playboi Carti)

Strike (Holster)

sAy sOMETHINg

Old Gold & Black

Arts & Culture

The dark side of the boat: reviewing Lil Yachty’s Pink Floyd-inspired album

The Atlanta rapper’s ambitious ‘Let’s Start Here’ is exciting

Courtesy of Complex

“Let’s Start Here” takes inspiration from Pink Floyd.

Tabitha Cahan , Contributing Writer January 30, 2023

As a music aficionado, keeping up with Pitchfork is practically my religion. What I was not expecting on my Pitchfork feed, however, was a promotion announcing “Let’s Start Here,” Lil Yachty’s psychedelic rock album. Now this piqued my interest. 

Lil Yachty, or Lil Boat, as his fans refer to him, is an Atlanta-based rapper whose discography is, quite frankly, forgettable. His trademark over-autotuned vocals are outshone by rap powerhouse Travis Scott, and his instrumentals have rarely been described as inventive. With the exception of his TikTok-famous hit “Poland,” I couldn’t name a single one of his songs. 

Though Lil Yachty is categorized as a rapper, with his musical career being launched within the hip-hop genre, his fifth studio album, “Let’s Start Here,” is decidedly not rap. Best defined as a psychedelic rock album, “Let’s Start Here” is unrecognizable in comparison to Lil Yachty’s previous hits such as “Poland” or “One Night.” Taking the leap to enter a new genre that is relatively underused in terms of mainstream music is risky, but like Radiohead’s electronic album “Kid A,” this genre experimentation really paid off.

Could this be Lil Yachty’s “Kid A” ? To Radiohead fans everywhere, let me explain. No, I am not likening Lil Yachty’s previous discography to Radiohead — that would be preposterous. Radiohead is many things, and forgettable is not one of them. What I am more interested in is Radiohead and Lil Yachty’s refusal to be defined. I believe that “Let’s Start Here” is Lil Yachty’s rebellion against the confines of rap.  

Radiohead, pre- “Kid A,” was defined as a 90s Britpop band, likened to that of U2, Oasis, Blur, etc. “Kid A,” however, blew that definition completely out of the water. It was a dystopian electronic album, filled with soundscapes and entirely different instrumentation. As Pitchfork writer Brent DiCrescenzo aptly described it, ‘Kid A’ makes rock and roll childish.” It was one of the most shocking turns in their discography.

“Let’s Start Here,” executively produced by SadPony, was released on Jan. 27, 2023. Contributors and features include MGMT’s Benjamin Goldwasser, Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Jacob Portrait, Alex G, Mac DeMarco, Wimberly, Justin Raisen, Teezo Touchdown, Daniel Caesar, Fousheé, Diana Gordon, Magdalena Bay, Justine Skye and Nick Hakim. This lineup is completely unexpected but exciting nonetheless. 

In this psychedelic rock odyssey, Lil Yachty’s inspiration of Pink Floyd definitely shines through. Many songs on the album also sound similar to Tame Impala or even Childish Gambino’s “Awaken, My Love!” In this equally shocking left turn, Lil Yachty is redefining the creative limits of his music. 

The opener “the BLACK seminole.” beautifully exemplifies his Pink Floyd inspiration. This song feels like a direct homage to “Dark Side of the Moon.” Pieces of the song seem to be drawn from “Breathe (In The Air),” “The Great Gig in the Sky” and even earlier works like “Pigs (Three Different Ones).” Best described as a cosmic rock expedition, the track is a seven-minute journey into the world he has created. The instrumentals are transcendent — complete with a guitar solo, of course. Similar to “Everything In Its Right Place” from “Kid A,” it sets the stage for the songs to follow. 

The third track on the album, “running out of time,” is sung in part by Justine Skye and feels poppy and bright. The bassline is upbeat and funky, complementing the guitar riffs and swirling synths. Lil Yachty sings romantically, inviting the listener to stay up all night with him. I mean, if this is the soundtrack, I’m game. 

“THE zone~” also features Justine Skye, but it feels much more like the psychedelic powerhouse Tame Impala than the previous. Between the in strumentation and the hyperbolic lyrics “I’m so far gone,” this one truly feels like an acid trip.

On a more lighthearted track, Diana Gordon is the main singer on “drive ME crazy!”, and i t’s pure bliss. The instrumental is more minimalist in the beginning, honing in on Gordon’s voice. Toward the end of the track, there is a synth breakdown that cuts the song into half time, and we hear Lil Yachty rapping for the first and only time in the album. The string ending neatly ties the song up in a little bow.

In another track that sounds straight off a Tame Impala record, “sHouLd i B?” transitions perfectly into “The Alchemist.” The punchy drums and modulated synth make for two effervescent tracks. The breakdown in “The Alchemist” is accented nicely by Fousheé hitting her highest register.

The final track “REACH THE SUNSHINE.” sounds eerily reminiscent of Radiohead’s “Pyramid Song.” “Pyramid Song” was originally intended as a track for “Kid A” before it was on “Amnesiac,” an album composed mostly of the b-sides of “Kid A.” The first line of “REACH THE SUNSHINE.” sung by Daniel Caesar, “Staring in the mirror, and what do I see / A three-eyed man staring back at me” has a flow comparable to Radiohead’s “I jumped in the river and what did I see? / Black eyed angels swam with me.” 

It is equally sparse in terms of instrumentation, until it reaches a crescendo about two and a half minutes into the song (almost the same time stamp as “Pyramid Song,” might I add). The crescendo transports the listener to the same pocket of the universe with a deep, synth-fueled surge. This feels more sinister than the Radiohead track — the anti-chorus is peppered with evil laughs rather than Thom Yorke’s signature croon. This track is Lil Yachty reaching his full potential. It is ethereal and otherworldly. The cacophony of the anti-chorus reaches new heights, and it’s exciting to hear. 

Whether my argument resonates with you or not, it is always exciting to see artists take risks. One cannot deny how ambitious of a move this is, especially given the constraints of being a trap artist. In the same vein as Radiohead, throughout his rise to fame, Lil Yachty has been mainstream. “Let’s Start Here” and “Kid A” show that an artist can completely change their trajectory. In an age with increasing amounts of cash-grab, radio-friendly drivel, albums like this give me faith in the future of music.  

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Joey • Feb 26, 2023 at 6:01 pm

Sophistication encapsulated in a article

Alexandra Falk • Feb 23, 2023 at 7:49 pm

I got into Wake Forest

Adam • Feb 1, 2023 at 11:10 am

Going to listen now

Preston • Jan 31, 2023 at 9:55 pm

Pigs was from Animals, which is not an earlier work than Dark Side of the Moon

G Lampa • May 15, 2023 at 12:20 pm

Bullseye. A little homework goes a long way. First track actually does harken back to pre-Dark Side stuff; specifically “Childhood’s End” 1972.

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Birthday: Aug 23, 1997

Birthplace: Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Rapper Miles Parks McCollum - better known by his stage name, Lil Yachty - was born in Mableton, Ga., on Aug. 23, 1997. He first gained fame in August 2015 with the release of his singles "One Night" and "Minnesota." That fall, he dropped out of Alabama State University to pursue his musical career, which saw him release his debut mixtape "Lil Boat" in March 2016. On June 10 of that year, Lil Yachty announced that he had signed a joint venture record deal with Quality Control Music, Capitol Records and Motown Records. His debut studio album, "Teenage Emotions," came out on May 26, 2017. His follow-up album, "Lil Boat 2," was released on March 9, 2018. Lil Yachty described his musical style as "bubblegram trap" for his sampling sounds that range from "Mario Bros." audio and the theme from long-running animated series "Rugrats" to the startup sound of a Nintendo GameCube video-game console. Outside of music, he debuted as a model for Kanye West's Yeezy Season 3 fashion line at New York's Madison Square Garden in February 2016.

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Copyright ©2024 Biography Host

• Full Name Jatavia Shakara Johnson
• Occupation Rapper, Musician, Singer
• Nationality American
• Birthplace Miami, Florida, USA
• Birth Date Dec 03, 1992
• Age 31 Years, 4 Months
• Nickname JT
• Ethnicity African-American
• Zodiac Sign Sagittarius
• Boyfriend Lil Uzi
• Height 5 Feet 4 Inches
• Net Worth Undisclosed

Jatavia Shakara Johnson | Biography

Jatavia Shakara Johnson began her musical journey with Brownlee in 2017 when they were motivated to record following an altercation with some individuals. The duo purchased a beat from their friend and producer Chad Thomas, known as MajorNine. The beat used rapper Khia Shamone Finch’s raunchy 2002 hit ‘My Neck, My Black.’ The duo then recorded a diss track ‘Fuck Dat Nigga’ as City Girls at Johnson’s father’s in-home studio as a joke. 

• By Reena Chikanbanjar
• Update : April 28, 2022

Jatavia Shakara Johnson, alias JT, is an American rapper. She rose to fame as the one half of the South Florida-based female hip hop duo, City Girls.

Jatavia Shakara Johnson is a rap artist and a member of the hip hop band City Girls born on 3 December 1992 in Miami, Florida. She and her friend Caresha Romeka Brownlee, alias Yung Miami, recorded their first song titled ‘Fuck Dat Nigga’ as City Girls in August 2017. The duo then released their first mixtape titled  Period  in May 2018. They later released their first studio album,  Girl Code,  in November 2018. Their second studio album,  City on Lock , was released in June 2020.

She Had A Rough Upbringing

Johnson had a very rough childhood because of her mother’s drug abuse. In December 2019, Hotnewhiphop.com reported Johnson’s testimony about her childhood. She said, “My mother was an addict. I hate drugs. I don't even smoke weed. I get upset about it too. Drugs ruined my childhood!”

She Met Her Bandmate Caresha Brownlee In Her Early Teens

Johnson met her future rapping partner, Caresha Brownlee, known as Yung Miami, through mutual friends during her early teenage years. Johnson knew Brownlee’s middle school best friend, and Brownlee was close with Johnson’s cousins. At age 17, Johnson and Brownlee used to go to block parties, clubs, and strip clubs with their friends.

She Released Her Debut Track ‘Fuck Dat Nigga’ With Caresha Brownlee In 2017

Johnson began her musical journey with Brownlee in 2017 when they were motivated to record following an altercation with some individuals. The duo purchased a beat from their friend and producer Chad Thomas, known as MajorNine. The beat used rapper Khia Shamone Finch’s raunchy 2002 hit ‘My Neck, My Black.’ The duo then recorded a debut studio track ‘Fuck Dat Nigga’ as City Girls at Johnson’s father’s in-home studio as a joke and Brownlee’s cousin as the engineer. The track is described as “a diss track towards their ex-boyfriends for not giving them money when they asked.”

Even though the song was just recorded and released for fun, it started making waves. However, in the meantime, Johnson was arrested and held on credit card fraud charges. This left Brownlee the burden of judging whether the song they had recorded for fun could become their career. In such an unusual situation, Brownlee decided to promote the music. She told The Fader in August 2018 that when Johnson was in jail, she promoted the song by paying DJs to play the track in strip clubs. After that, the song quickly gained hundreds of thousands of plays. 

The song also appeared on  Quality Control: Control the Streets, Vol. 1 . The compilation debuted at the top of Billboard’s ‘R&B/Hip-Hop’ chart. It also reached number five on the Billboard 200 chart. In addition, the duo made the official music video of their first single featuring rapper Trina. The music video appeared in January 2018.

Also Read:  Tracie Spencer - R&B Albums, Net Worth, Husband & Now

The Success Of Their Debut Track Earned Them A Signing Deal

When the duo’s song ‘Fuck Dat Nigga’ started taking off, it caught the attention of Quality Control Music’s Pierre “Pee” Thomas and Kevin “Coach K” Lee. Johnson and Brownlee soon signed with the record label Quality Control Music in the fall of 2017. According to Brownlee, they were in confusion when they signed with the record label. In an interview with Rolling Stone in July 2018, Brownlee said, “When we got signed, we said to each other, ‘Man, we ain’t no rappers for real. We finna sign this contract like we playin’ with these people!’” However, she said Thomas and Lee helped turn them into artists during the recording process of their mixtape  Period .

In May 2018, City Girls released their first mixtape,  Period , which went to  number 16  on Billboard’s ‘Heatseekers Albums’ chart the same month. The mixtape also ranked 26th on Rolling Stone’s ’30 Best Hip-Hop Albums of 2018.’ 

Two months later, the duo rose to prominence after assisting with songwriting and vocal contributions to Canadian rapper Aubrey Drake Graham, a.k.a. Drake’s song titled ‘In My Feelings.’ The track became a number one pop hit in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and several other territories.

First Studio Album

The hip-hop duo released their first studio album,  Girl Code , in November 2018. The album featured vocals from rappers including Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar, Dominique Armani Jones, and Rodriquez Jacquees Broadnax, known by their professional names Cardi B, Lil Baby, and Jacquees respectively. The album reached number 31 on Billboard’s ‘Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums’ chart and 63 on Billboard 200. In 2019, the duo released several singles, including ‘Act Up.’

Second Studio Album

On 19 June 2020, City Girl’s second studio album,  City on Lock , leaked online. Johnson announced hours later that the album would be released at midnight on the same day. The album featured appearances from Doja Cat (Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini), Lil Baby, Lil Durk (Durk Derrick Banks), and Yo Gotti (Mario Sentell Giden Mims).

The hip-hop duo released a new single titled ‘Twerkulator’ on 21 May 2021. They released their latest single titled 'Top Notch' on 1 April 2022.

She Was Arrested And Convicted Of Fraud Charges

Shortly after releasing their debut single ‘Fuck Dat Nigga,’ Johnson was  arrested for fraudulent credit card charges  in June 2017 at a Nordstrom luxury departmental store. She was arrested after purchasing a pair of shoes from the store. Prosecutors in Johnson’s fraud case argued that she used a handful of stolen credit card numbers to purchase clothes and gift cards from stores in the mall in 2016 and 2017. 

Some celebrities supported Johnson and showed their displeasure with Johnson’s incarceration. For example, her fellow Miami-based rapper Trina showed her support by wearing a tee-shirt with “Free JT” imprinted on it, and Drake wrote “Damn free my shorty” on Instagram.

After being held on credit card fraud charges, Johnson pleaded guilty to aggravated identity theft in January 2018 and was sentenced to 24 months in federal prison. 

The judge agreed to push back Johnson’s surrender date after her lawyer provided a schedule of City Girls’ upcoming gig at the BET Awards in June. 

Johnson’s lawyer requested another delay a week before Johnson was set to go to jail, stating that she was getting meteoric bookings and rapper Drake had just co-signed her. Though the judge did not fully grant the second requested extension, Johnson was sanctioned to complete her verse for Drake and perform at the awards show.

On 30 June 2018, Johnson took to Instagram to admit that she would be going to prison after being previously out on bond. “Did more than I thought I could imagine in this short period of time out on bond. Now it's time for me to knock this down and come back strong forever. Hold my baby down y'all,” she wrote in her Instagram story at the time.

After turning herself into authorities, Johnson was held at the Federal Detention Center in Miami. She was then reported to jail for a two-year jail sentence, and she began serving her sentence at Federal Correctional Institution - Tallahassee (FCI Tallahassee). She was slated to be released on 21 March 2020. 

On 8 October 2019, TMZ reported that Johnson was out of prison and was shifted from FCI Tallahassee to an Atlanta-based halfway house. The web portal also reported that Johnson would finish her sentence in a halfway house, where inmates get a lot of extra benefits like being allowed to go outside of the house to work and visit family and friends.

She quickly took advantage of her freedom and dropped the new song, ‘JT First Day Out,’ the same day she was released from the prison. “This really my first day out I ain’t wait a day!!!!,” she wrote in an Instagram post, alongside a sneak peek of the new song.

When one Twitter user asked what she did on her first day out, Johnson said, “On a studio bus driving to the halfway house, recording, doing my hair, nails, make up and spending time with my loved ones all at the same time.”

According to the Federal Bureau of Prison records, Johnson was officially released from RRM Atlanta on 7 March 2020. Shortly after her release, she took to Twitter to express her excitement about sleeping in her own bed after a long time. “Woke up in my own bed for the first time in 2 years! Happppppyyyyy 🙃,” she wrote on her now-deleted tweet, along with a collage of photos of herself in her room lying in bed.

Jatavia Shakara Johnson Mugshot

In December 2020, Johnson  went off  on bloggers who posted her mugshot. “Why you uploading me like if I was I’ll be like why are you worried about her like don’t worry about me. I was 18. I’m 28. It was literally 10 years ago,” she said on IG. 

She went on to say that the mugshot was taken when she was a kid and wasn’t even wearing makeup. “I was a kid like I had just woke up. My face was swollen. I had crusted my eyes, crushing my mouth, everything the bounty hunters had just got me. I was just savage like I already was living like that like not for fake but for real. I was living like that. Stayed up out of my business y’all,” she added.

She further explained how her looks have changed over the years. 

She Dated Fellow Rapper Lil Yachty

Johnson was in a relationship with rapper Miles Parks McCollum, alias Lil Yachty, who has served as a lead songwriter on the City Girls’ hit track ‘Act Up’ from their debut studio album  Girl Code . However, things turned sour between them sometime in 2019 when she was serving jail time. A couple of weeks after she was officially released from prison, Johnson mentioned during a live stream with her fans in October 2019 that Lil Yachty never sent her any letters or emails during her prison sentence and that he cheated on her while she could not be with him on the outside.

Is Jatavia Shakara Johnson (JT) Dating Lil Uzi Vert?

After her relationship with Lil Yachty ended, Johnson started dating rapper Symere Bysil Woods, professionally known as Lil Uzi Vert, in late 2019. The two’s dating rumors swirled for months as they dropped hints about each other on social media. For instance, in November 2020, Woods posted a throwback picture of the pair on his social media account, which fans believed was a clear sign of a romantic relationship. 

According to The Sun, Johnson also occasionally took to social media to speak about or to Woods. For example, when Woods wrote “I only love myself” in his now-deleted tweet in 2020, Johnson responded, “Same here, f*** n****.”

The rapper duo again fueled the dating rumors when Woods dropped a tweet on 25 February 2021 that reads, “Don’t act like I ain’t get you ya first Birkin.” The tweet was thought to be directed at Johnson because it referenced City Girls’ hit song ‘Birkin P***y.’ Johnson responded to his tweet with a couple of laughing face emojis attached. A fan replied to her, saying Lil Uzi was wrong for shading her like that. However, she quickly responded to the fan asking why everything Lil Uzi said towards her was looked at as bad and why they thought he was being shady.

After months of a rumored relationship, Woods  confirmed their relationship  late at night on 28 February 2021 by mentioning Johnson in a tweet that read, “JT is the one.” The tweet came after Woods sent Johnson some crab legs, which she said she had been craving in an earlier tweet. Woods also shared a video on his Instagram Story of Johnson enjoying the seafood, and she thanked him for the food via tweet.

On the midnight of 1 March, Woods proclaimed his love for Johnson by tweeting, “I had 2 be real with myself I love JT and y’all will 2.” In a subsequent tweet, he penned “My Darkqueen” with love emoji attached.

After dating each other, Woods spoiled Johnson with expensive gifts. She took to Instagram Story in April 2021 to announce that her boyfriend had given her a diamond ring and chain, commemorating Wood’s 2016 project  Lil Uzi Vert vs. the World , embroidered on the back with “Uzi first piece” and “To: JT.” 

In May 2021, during an appearance on  Respectfully Justin , Johnson revealed that Woods gifted her bag full of cash on her first date with him. “I had a little Chanel bag and he told me to take as much as you can. I could only fit $30,000, and I was so mad,” Johnson said. “I don’t want to keep talking because I don’t want it to seem like I’m bragging. I have a good man. I didn’t even know he was a good man. I was fucking with him for almost two years before I found out he was a good man.”

Johnson also gifted Woods a car for his birthday in August 2021. However, the couple sparked rumors of a breakup when fans found both rappers unfollowed each other on Instagram. Woods wiped out his Instagram page and unfollowed everyone on the app, including Johnson. Woods was also not found on Johnson’s following list. But some sites claimed that unfollowing each other did not necessarily mean the couple had split up and that they might just be going through “a rough patch.” In the meantime, some sources claimed that the two split due to Woods’ treatment of her bandmate Brownlee.

However, in December 2021, Woods reserved a whole theme park for Johnson’s 29th birthday. He booked Nickelodeon Studios Park at the American Dream Mall in New Jersey. Many sources claimed that Woods might have had to pay around $50 thousand to get the whole theme park for themselves for the day.

The couple enjoyed the various fun rides. Johnson posted several snaps of the day on Instagram with the title “Best Birthday Ever.” Woods also surprised her with a brand new McLaren 720s and a handbag.

Woods declared his love for her in March 2022, tweeting, “I love JT so much that I will do anything for her she is the best feeling I ever had in my life.”

The couple again sparked rumors of their break up in April 2022 after Woods tweeted that Johnson broke up with him. He tweeted in the early hours of 5 April 2022 that Johnson broke up with him over a trivial matter. Woods continued sharing his emotions about his breakup the next day, dedicated to Johnson. According to Woods, she broke up with him over an old tweet when a Philadelphia-based visual artist Anhia Zaira Santana, a.k.a. Distortedd, retweeted Woods’ 2015 tweet, where he attempted to hit her. 

However, a week later, Johnson and Woods reconciled as she declared her love for him. “You know I love you like no one else could,” she  wrote  on Instagram, alongside an image of the pair.

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