NBA Youngboy has now been on house arrest for over 700 days.
On a clear day like today, you can look out the living room’s floor-to-ceiling windows, over the icy swimming pool and presently invisible dirt bike track below, and the entirety of the Salt Lake Valley spreads out before you like an overturned snow globe. Inside, the space is all white and sparsely furnished, decorated with a pair of spindly Christmas trees, a half-dozen painted portraits — in one, a smiling young man feeds his daughter a cheeseburger — and an enormous plaque that glints in the sunlight and reads, “100 RIAA Gold/Platinum Certifications,” and, in larger letters, “YoungBoy Never Broke Again.” Its recipient, who introduces himself as Kentrell, sits quietly beneath it as a motherly woman named Quintina, who is not his mother but his financial adviser, paints his fingernails black.
NBA YoungBoy has gained a small amount of freedom.
According to Baton Rouge news outlet, WAFB9, the rapper appeared in court on Friday morning (Aug. 30) for a probation hearing related to his May 17 arrest. A judge approved that YoungBoy can now exit his home while on house arrest, but there are specific stipulations. The rapper is not allowed to perform or go to an outside studio to record music, but the judge said that he can record music inside of his home. YoungBoy was also approved to go to church, the doctor and the bank. He was ordered to be on house arrest for 14 months.
The neighbors have yet to figure out who exactly it is that moved in just over a year ago: a rail-thin 23-year-old with faded face tattoos and a stable of luxury vehicles that never leave the garage. Should they learn that he is signed to Motown Records and makes music as YoungBoy Never Broke Again, it’s likely they would still draw a blank. (A middle-aged blonde from the mansion next door cranes her neck from the window of her SUV to gawk at the camera crew unloading outside for today’s cover shoot.) And it’s true that the artist born Kentrell DeSean Gaulden, whom fans call YoungBoy or simply YB, has practically zero mainstream presence: He’s not on the radio, scarcely performs live, regularly deactivates his social media accounts and shies away from the press.
The rapper was detained on May 17, just days after he was shot at in a Sunny Isles Beach, FL shooting. The incident left a 43-year-old man dead and YoungBoy’s girlfriend with a wound to her shoulder.
YoungBoy’s lawyer said that the rapper was remorseful about the man’s death. “He was the victim of an assassination attempt,” the attorney said at the time. “YoungBoy told me, ‘I wish they would have gotten me, not him.’”
His next probation hearing is scheduled for Dec. 13.
