Over the last couple of months Youngboy Never Broke Again releases a series of songs and music videos on Youtube. After his release from prison, YB has put his nose to the grindstone for a bit while on house arrest. Shortly after Youngboy and Birdman released their mixtape, “From the Bayou”, NBA Youngboy started releasing music again in promotion for his new “Colors” mixtape.

Prior to releasing any music while on house arrest, Kentrell unlisted every music video from his YouTube channel(which have since been restored). He went from being the number one artist on youtube from the last three years (in terms of views), to having zero recorded views on his channels. 

Youngboy, an artist known for his consistent and frequent release of music, uncharacteristically was quite a silent artist in 2021 because of his incarceration. Due to recent frequent releases towards the end of last year, we can infer that 2022 holds a lot of new music and content from NBA Youngboy.

On Friday 21st, 2021, NBA Youngboy released his mixtape “Colors” with little to no promotion. The majority of the promotion was just the release of six singles that were on the twenty song mixtape. 

Something else that will contribute to the attraction of this album is Kentrell’s recent beef with O’Block and basically the entire industry. Of the six songs released ahead of the mixtape, two of them contained directed shots against other big names in the celebrity world. 

The song “Bring the Hook” blatantly said “this that squid game, O’Block pack get rolled up”, which is essentially a sign of disrespect against the deceased friends or family of one’s opposition, better known as one’s “opps”. 

This came about due to the passing of well-known O’Block artist, King Von. His public display of disdain against O’Block is because one of his well-known affiliates, Quando Rondo,  and his clique was responsible for the death of King Von. Since then Youngboy has been not only shown who he stands with, but has also threatened anyone who dares to test his patience.

In response to this diss against O’Block, a lot of Chicago artists and OTF affiliates had something to say about the shots sent at their area. One of the bigger Chicago artists, Lil Reese, had something to say about the diss on Twitter. 

Then the young artist NLE Choppa responded under the Tweet with the statement, “I stamp that”. In retaliation to NLE’s comment, Youngboy had to put him in his place for inserting himself into a situation he is not involved in. On  the song “Know Like I Know”, the entire first verse is a direct threat to Choppa for interfering with the situation despite Choppa saying on multiple occasions that Youngboy was his favorite rapper.

This whole mixtape has been an amalgamation of Youngboy’s emotions over the last year, exhibiting his growth in his musical style and his growth as a man. Two of the biggest themes of this tape are how he feels as though the entire industry is completely against him and how he is trying to live a low profile life outside of music in order to be a better father to his kids. 

The songs that display Youngboy’s broadening of styles are “Emo Rockstar”, “DC Marvel”, “Fish Scale”, and “Emo Lifestyle”. The main differences between these songs and the other more traditional Youngboy songs are the instrumentals, the vocal fluctuations used, and the different adlibs he started to use on these songs compared to others.

On other songs like “No Switch” and “Bring It On” Youngboy gives us the aggressive rap style that never fails to bring out this primal urge to be an absolute menace. Songs like these from YB exude this chaotic energy that reminds us why he is and always will be one of the best rappers of all time. 

The “Colors” mixtape has definitely made Youngboy’s recent hiatus announcement a little more bearable. While he’s out in rehab, listeners just hope this will lead to the next level in NBA Youngboy’s musical talent.