Chart-topping 22-year-old rapper YoungBoy Never Broke Again, born Kentrell D. Gaulden, pleaded not guilty Friday to possession of a firearm and ammunition by a felon, ending one of two federal gun trials he faced.
Jurors in Los Angeles reached their verdict after about two hours on the second day of deliberations. Mr Gaulden, who is known to fans as NBA YoungBoy or YB, faced up to 10 years in prison in the case.
The California gun charge stems from YoungBoy’s March 2021 arrest in the Los Angeles area on a separate federal gun warrant from an earlier incident in the rapper’s home state of Louisiana. In September 2020, YoungBoy was among 16 people charged with possession of weapons and drugs during a video shoot in Baton Rouge. His lawyers said none of the contraband was in his possession.
Prosecutors in the Central District of California said that in trying to serve the warrant in that case, YoungBoy initially appeared to be cooperative, stopping his Mercedes Maybach before taking off again and leading officers on a “high-speed chase.” After the rapper fled on foot, police found an FNX .45 caliber handgun and ammunition behind the front passenger seat, along with cash and jewelry.
YoungBoy’s attorneys argued that the rapper was unaware of his outstanding federal warrant at the time and panicked when armed officers approached his vehicle, causing him to take off. He didn’t know the weapon was in the car, they said, and no usable fingerprints or DNA linked YoungBoy to the gun.
Prosecutors tried to link the rapper to the weapon using a photo and social media video of YoungBoy handling a “golden-brown handgun that appears to be identical to the firearm found in his car,” according to court records. The photo was taken at the same Philadelphia store that sold YoungBoy the jewelry also found in the car, they say. Lawyers for the rapper said the gun was identical to an airsoft replica and could not be confirmed to be the same weapon.
“We believe the evidence presented in this case supports the charges brought by the grand jury,” Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, said in a statement. “While we are disappointed with the verdict, we respect the jury’s decision.”
When the trial began Tuesday, the judge in the case, R. Gary Klausner, ruled to exclude lyrics from three of YoungBoy’s songs from use in court. Prosecutors said the leads — “Gunsmoke,” “Life Support” and “Lonely Child” — referred to “an individual associated with the buyer of the gun, the model of the gun found in his car and the jewelry maker who found the jewelry to the gun.”
But the rapper’s lawyers successfully argued that the “hardcore” and “highly inflammatory” rap lyrics would be harmful and not directly relevant, noting that the song referencing an FN gun was released before the FN gun seized from the Maybach was purchased .
“This is for fun,” they wrote in a lawsuit. “It’s not an admission of other wrongdoing, but it paints the rappers in a bad light, and a jury may conclude from the song that Mr. Golden is a cruel person and take those feelings with him into the boardroom.”
The rapper’s lawyers added: “The real issues are: 1) whether he knew the gun was inside the car and 2) whether he intended to possess it. This is a relatively simple case.
Known for his gritty reality rap, prolific production and obsessive online fan base, YoungBoy is among the most streamed artists in the United States so far this year, competing with the likes of Drake and Taylor Swift. Since signing a $2 million deal with Atlantic Records in 2016, he’s frequently topped the Billboard album chart — reaching No. 1 with four releases in less than two years — but continues to exist largely outside the mainstream entertainment business. due in part to his ongoing legal troubles.
In 2017, YoungBoy pleaded guilty to aggravated assault with a firearm and received a suspended sentence of 10 years in prison plus probation stemming from his role in a non-fatal drive-by shooting for which he was originally charged with attempted first-degree murder. In 2019, after subsequent arrests, including a domestic violence incident in which he pleaded guilty to abuse, the rapper was sentenced to 90 days in jail.
Since October, when he was granted a $500,000 bond in federal gun cases, YoungBoy has been living under house arrest in Utah, where he continues to record and release music.
An additional federal YoungBoy gun case in Louisiana is ongoing. His lawyers argued that he had been unfairly targeted, highlighting law enforcement’s name for one of their operations: Never Free Again, “an obvious blow to Gaulden’s wildly successful music and marketing brand.” The rapper’s legal team successfully suppressed video evidence in the case that it says was obtained unconstitutionally.
The rapper’s arrest in Los Angeles last year, his lawyers said, was a “large-scale and grossly unnecessary militaristic show of force and intimidation.”
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