Yella Beezy

Simultaneously street and country with an elastic, no-nonsense flow, rapper Yella Beezy represents the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas, Texas. Active since the early 2010s, he released several mixtapes before breaking through when his 2017 track “That’s on Me” developed into a slow-burning hit. His subsequent full-length, 2018′s Ain't No Goin' Bacc, entered the top half of the Billboard 200 album chart. Baccend Beezy became his second charting project before the end of the decade, by which point his music surpassed a billion plays across streaming platforms. He has since teamed with Trapboy Freddy for 2020′s I'm My Brother's Keeper, and has issued 2022′s Bad Azz Yellow Boy, plus a handful of singles highlighted by “Hit,” a jabbing 2024 Lil Wayne collaboration. Beezy has released several mixtapes, including Lil Yella Mane (2012), Country Rap Tunes (2015), Lite Work (2015), and Broke Nights Rich Days (2017). The second volume of Lite Work (also 2017) featured “That’s on Me,” a track with a video viewed well over four million times within four months of release. The song gradually picked up radio airplay throughout America, becoming a sleeper hit. Beezy’s momentum continued with the March 2018 upload of an official clip for the Lil Baby collaboration “Up One,” another track off Lite Work, Vol. 2. Its views exceeded 1.5 million in less than a week. In October of that year, the rapper was the victim of a drive-by shooting that left him briefly hospitalized after sustaining three gunshot wounds. Even this traumatic event didn’t slow his momentum, and Beezy recovered quickly to sign with indie label HITCO and release Ain't No Goin' Bacc in November. The album included a star-studded version of “That’s on Me” featuring 2 Chainz, T.I., Jeezy, and others. By mid-2019, Beezy had surpassed the billion-times-played mark across all streaming platforms. On the back of this achievement, he released the Baccend Beezy mixtape, another collection of dark and booming Southern rap with guest stars ranging from Young Thug to Too $hort. Stand-alone tracks such as “Ay Ya Ya Ya” (featuring Ty Dolla $ign) and “Headlocc” (with Young Thug) arrived in 2020, as did the Trapboy Freddy collaboration I'm My Brother's Keeper. Beezy returned in 2022 with Bad Azz Yella Boy, containing the spare and catchy “DFWM,” and over the course of 2023 and 2024 issued tracks like “Motion” and the Lil Wayne-assisted “Hit.” ~ Andy Kellman