Just a few years ago,
YBN Nahmir was one of the hottest up-and-coming rappers in the game.
He first went viral with the track Rubbin Off the Paint
and was part of a successful collective with his homies YBN Cordae and Almighty Jay.
But now the YBN group is finished and Nahmir is struggling to keep a fanbase.
To make matters worse, he’s now being accused of switching from GD to cripp.
Here’s what’s going down.
Unlike most rappers, YBN Nahmir ain’t come up hustling in the streets.
He started out as just a young kid who played a lot of GTA
and freestyled for his friends online,
and music wasn’t something he took seriously.
But all that changed after he linked up with Almighty Jay.
Almighty Jay was just another dude who joined the Xbox Live party Nahmir was in.
They ain’t even get along at first,
and Nahmir later said that the first real rap he ever recorded
was a diss track against Jay.
Jay sent his own diss track at Nahmir within a day,
and from then on they had mutual respect for each other
and eventually became close friends.
This eventually led to Nahmir and Jay forming the Young Boss N**** Collective
or YBN, with a bunch of their homies in 2014.
At the time there was a lot of people repping YBN, but Nahmir, Jay, and Cordae
became the faces and stars of the group.
But even after YBN was formed, none of them were really focused on music.
In 2015, Nahmir and Jay released their first official track Hood Mentality,
but it barely got any views.
They kept releasing music on YouTube and Soundcloud for the next couple of years,
but nothing that really popped off like that.
So, it sounded like music was just a hobby for them,
but then in 2017 their lives changed overnight.
Nahmir dropped the track Rubbin Off the Paint in September 2017,
and when he woke up the next day it had over 50,000 views.
In one night it became his hottest track by far.
Then, a couple of days later,
WorldstarHiphop posted the music video on their YouTube channel
and took it to a whole new level.
As of today, Rubbin Off the Paint has over 200 million views on YouTube.
With this one song, Nahmir put himself and YBN on the map.
He got so popular so fast that he had to drop out of high school
and start taking online classes.
Overnight the YBN crew went from a bunch of kids playing video games together,
to an actual hip hop collective with a Billboard charting song.
In May 2018, Nahmir, Almighty Jay, and Cordae
all performed together for the first time at Rolling Loud.
That same year, Nahmir was listed on XXL’s freshman class
and the three of them performed again at the Freshman Show in New York.
Nahmir was the first one to pop off,
but Cordae started making big moves of his own.
Juice Wrld brought him on his North American WRLD Domination tour,
then the YBN crew announced a month-long European tour right after.
Nahmir, Almighty Jay, and Cordae was taking over the game.
Out of nowhere these three dudes who met on Xbox Live
was performing shows all over the world.
But that kind of overnight success rarely lasts forever
and the good times ain’t last for long.
In 2019, Cordae took his career to the next level.
He was named on the 2019 XXL Freshman class,
then earned a Grammy nomination for his solo album The Lost Boy.
Nahmir was still dropping music, but nothing that came close to his earlier hits.
Cordae, Nahmir, and Jay released their YBN mixtape a year earlier,
but out of the three of them Cordae was the only one
who was still building momentum in the industry.
Then in 2020, things really fell apart for the group.
Cordae and Almighty Jay both decided to drop YBN from their names,
and in August 2020 Nahmir tweeted “They left this YBN **** in the gutter.
Remember that. I’ll turn it up myself.”
Nahmir was obviously hurt about how everything went down,
but Cordae said in an interview with TIDAL that it was all still love.
Nahmir and Jay, those always gonna be my brothers,
you know what I'm saying in real life, like those are my brothers.
Like, I think the world of them cats, you know what I'm saying.
And you know, sometimes as friends, you- you know, you grow apart
and you have different visions for what you wanna do and that’s ok,
there’s no love lost. Like I said, I thank the world of them n***as,
I love Nahmir and Jay to death.
Nahmir took the breakup of YBN pretty hard.
In November 2020 he tweeted “After my album I really just wanna be done.
Tired of fake N****s, fake teams, weak ass conflict of interest.
Everything. I’mma give y’all the best music ever then I’m gone.”
Later he said he was just “playing,” but everyone knew that was cap.
Around the same time, Nahmir was getting trolled by fans on Twitter
for posting ads on Instagram.
Nahmir was pushing some kind of wealth-building course,
and fans said he was “really struggling.”
Nahmir responded by claiming he gets paid $5K per post and said
“Who wouldn’t make a simple Instagram post for $5,000 ?
I guess I’m broke guys. Stay blessed child.”
Nahmir was having a hard time in 2020,
but when 2021 came around it seemed like everything was cool again.
He was hyping up the release of his debut album, and was spreading good vibes
about Cordae and Almighty Jay in interviews.
Then, In February 2021 he went on No Jumper
and explained how the breakup wasn’t because there were issues in the group,
but people from the outside was taking advantage of them.
During that interview, Nahmir made it clear that he still had love for Jay and Cordae,
I got to, It feels so good just to know they’re winning at the end of the day, like,
you know they providing for their family. Know they’re doing the right things,
keeping their heads out of the bull****.”
Around the same time, Almighty Jay called out their manager
for taking advantage of them.
He posted on Instagram “This n***a James McMillan is a fraud.
He sign n****s to janky deals and ****** em over.
Nobody know NOTHING about the **** we go through on the daily basis
being signed to this n***a cause we cover for this n*** ass.
I’m done with this ****.”
Then he said “TRADEMARKING THE YBN NAME BEHIND N***S BACKS.
ASSIGNED ME A LAWYER HE USED TO BE ENGAGED TO WITHOUT TELLING ME.
SMH. TOOK ADVANTAGE OF SOME KIDS BRO.”
Cordae later backed up the claims that someone on the outside was responsible
for him dropping YBN from his name.
He told Genius that since none of them owned the YBN trademark,
he “can’t be talkin’ to kids about ownership and all of this
when we pushin’ this brand that we don’t even own.”
He also said that he called Nahmir up before making the decision
“It ain’t nothin’ against Nahmir and Jay.
Before I came to the conclusion that I was gon’ drop the three letters,
I called Nahmir and I asked for his blessing.”
Even though Cordae and Jay wasn’t repping YBN no more,
it seemed like everything was cool between them and Nahmir.
But after Nahmir dropped his debut album in March 2021,
everything went downhill fast.
In just a couple of months he went from showing love to Almighty Jay in interviews,
to wanting to get in the ring with him and box.
When Nahmir first popped off with Rubbin Off the Paint,
a lot of fans thought he had potential to be a star.
But just three years later, his first album only sold 4,000 copies in its first week.
Bad sales are one thing,
but Nahmir got dragged for the quality too.
Six months after its release, the track Soul Train had 405 thousand dislikes on YouTube
with just 55 thousand likes.
Then a couple of months later,
Nahmir and Jay started taking shots at each other on social media.
According to Jay, he and Nahmir was beefing for two years over some money.
Jay posted a video explaining the situation
An incident end up like, occurring with some n***as I used to be cool with.
They end up doing something and Nahmir end up gettin’ caught up in it somehow.
like what they end up doing.
Mind you, I ain’t cool with these n***as no more now that the incident has happened.
I ended up paying $30,000 and Nahmir ended up paying $10,000.
A couple months go by after the incident couple month go by
and me and him ain’t talk, none of that.”
Nahmir allegedly wanted Jay to pay him for the $10K bands he put up,
but obviously Jay wasn’t trying to pay the whole bill.
Eventually the situation got so heated
that Nahmir and Jay tried to set up a boxing match to settle it.
Jay said “I might as well get paid to beat his ass
and I want to do it in front of everybody.”
Nahmir shot back and told him “I been tryna beat your ass,
just like I beat your mans and them up.
When y’all see cuz hurt with all them black eyes, n***as ain’t hit cuz with bottles this time.”
Nahmir was referencing the time Jay was attacked in New York back in 2019.
Jay had bottles broken on him,
then the attackers stabbed and stomped on him before they snatched his money and chains.
Having beef with your homie is one thing,
but Jay almost died that night,
so Nahmir bringing it up like that was a low blow.
But later Jay told DJ Akademiks that he would never actually hurt him.
According to him, Nahmir was just putting on a tough guy act
and trying to portray himself as some kind of street dude.
Jay told him “You know what I fear for him?
I fear that this n***a gonna end up doing something to try and prove to himself to the world
that he’s so tough, that he’s gonna end up in jail for doing some dumbass ****.”
Jay and Nahmir were taking shots back and forth for a while,
but then Jay dropped some crazy news.
Nahmir has claimed for years that he’s a cripp.
Back in November 2019 he even tweeted
“Imma keep it Gangsta but im always wit my cripps.”
But during an Instagram Live session,
Almighty Jay revealed an old photo showing Nahmir repping GD.
Switching gangs ain’t something that just happens,
and this picture just backs up Jay’s claim
that Nahmir is putting on a front to look tough.
The situation calmed down after this.
The boxing match never happened, and both of them seemed to just move on.
In January 2022,
Nahmir showed off a bunch of diamond YBN chains on Instagram
and wrote “2022 come join da winning team *****.”
It looked like he was trying to restart YBN and bring in new artists,
but it wasn’t long before someone else called him out for switching gangs.
In February 2022, Nahmir was on an IG Live session
with a rapper named Iazye and another dude.
Iazye kept on pressing Nahmir about switching from GD to cripp,
and at first he was just dodging the question.
But Iazye ain’t let up and said “aight I’mma let you talk.
How you went from GD to cripp?”
And this is where Nahmir put the nail in his own coffin.
Iazye and the other dude on the Live session
paused to let Nahmir explain himself.
How I went from GD to cripp? It happened.
Bro what the ****, what the ****.
There's no way bro,
there's no way.
Bro you didn't even
There is no ****** way you just said that.
He just admit it.
YBN Nahmir is a high-profile artist
who’s been claimin cripp for years,
and all he had to say about the situation was “it happened.”.
He could have just denied it or kept his mouth shut,
but admitting to switching gangs on live basically confirmed
that he was never really about that life.
Nahmir was mocked like crazy for the Live session.
But come to find out, he’s been dealing with even bigger issues in his personal life.
In March 2022, he revealed in a series of tweets
that he’s been battling alcohol addiction for the past three years.
He told his fans “Alright y’all,
I feel like it’s best for me to just get this out my system.
For 3 years I’ve been struggling with an alcoholic addiction.
I’ve changed so much due to it, & not in the right ways.
I’ve pushed so many of my love ones away & the people I care about because of it…
If you’re struggling with addiction it’s best to seek help.
That’s all I’m trying to do.
I use to think this was just some ‘normal sh*t until I realized
I’m NOT THE SAME ANYMORE. Sh*t is one of the worst feelings ever.”
Blowing up overnight can be life changing in a lot of ways,
and not all of them are good.
Nahmir went from a normal high school kid making GTA videos,
to a world-touring rapper in the blink of an eye,
and the success came with consequences.
Hopefully Nahmir can get the help he needs to beat his addiction.
He’s only 22-years-old with a lot of potential.
He clearly has musical talent, but at this point,
fans are tired of the fake street persona.
If he gets his life under control and stops burning bridges with his homies,
he could easily make a comeback and rebuild his career.