NBA YoungBoy Stands Alone

"The tour began last month, with a pair of sold-out shows at the American Airlines Center, in Dallas, where the Mavericks play; soon after, videos of exuberant audiences began to circulate online. Not all of the excitement has been cheerful: during a show in Kansas City, a fourteen-year-old attendee was caught on tape assaulting a sixty-six-year-old usher, and was charged with felony and misdemeanor assault; dates in Chicago and Detroit have been cancelled, without much explanation."

"But when the tour arrived at the Prudential Center, in Newark, last week, the mood was festive, if chaotic. The arena was full of fans wearing black YoungBoy T-shirts and waving slime-green YoungBoy bandannas: they eschewed the seats, clogged the aisles, and rapped along with every word. The only person who didn't seem to get carried away by the frenzy was the calm and rather dignified figure who inspired it."

"At the dawn of YoungBoy's career, he didn't seem to be scared of anything. "Don't talk to me like I'm a child," he sneered, in a that was released in 2015, when he was only fifteen years old. He was lanky and serious-looking, with indentations on his forehead that were the result, he later explained, of a halo brace that had been screwed into his skull, after he broke his neck wrestling with friends at the age of four."

YoungBoy Never Broke Again launched his first major headlining tour with sold-out shows in Dallas and viral concert footage. Some dates have been marred by violence and cancellations, including a Kansas City incident in which a fourteen-year-old attacked a sixty-six-year-old usher and faced assault charges. At the Prudential Center in Newark, fans overwhelmed the arena, eschewing seats and waving bandannas while YoungBoy entered standing inside a lowered coffin and delivered rhymes with sorrowful stoicism. Early in his career he recorded provocative lyrics at fifteen and bore forehead indentations from a halo brace after a childhood neck injury.

Read at The New Yorker