NBA YoungBoy, a Baton Rouge-based rapper famous for chart-topping hits like “Outside Today,” is officially free of federal custody after President Donald Trump granted him clemency Wednesday, according to the rapper’s social media account and multiple news websites.
Trump’s decision was part of a batch of pardons that also included reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley and former GOP Congressman Michael Grimm. The president also commuted the federal prison sentence of Chicago drug kingpin Larry Hoover, according to Chicago media.
“I want to thank President Donald Trump for granting me a pardon and giving me the opportunity to keep building — as a man, as a father, and as an artist,” YoungBoy wrote in a statement posted to social media.
“I’m grateful. I’m focused. I’m ready,” he added.
YoungBoy, whose legal name is Kentrell Gaulden, has seen his career repeatedly collide with the legal system.
In 2017, a Louisiana District judge put him on probation for three years after he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault with a firearm in connection with a 2016 nonfatal drive-by on Kentucky Street in Baton Rouge. Then in 2020, he was arrested on federal gun possession charges while filming a music video in Baton Rouge. Gaulden, who is prohibited from possessing firearms as a felon, as been in and out of jail and house arrest ever since.
While under house arrest in Utah, Gaulden was taken into custody in April 2024 during a raid tied to a prescription drug fraud investigation. Prosecutors described the operation as an “ongoing criminal enterprise,” alleging that Gaulden and others used false identities to obtain promethazine and codeine from pharmacies across the state. He ultimately entered a plea agreement last November, admitting to possessing firearms as a felon and distributing controlled substances.
He eventually pleaded guilty to the gun charges in December and was sentenced to 23 months behind bars. In April, the 25-year-old was released from a residential reentry management facility in Phoenix. He then returned to Utah, where he was expected to serve five years of probation.
YoungBoy’s previous brush with Trump occurred on Mother’s Day 2019, when gunmen opened fire on the rapper and his entourage outside the Trump International Hotel in Miami, wounding Gaulden’s girlfriend. Members of his crew, who were legally armed, returned fire, fatally striking a bystander. Miami-Dade police ruled Gaulden’s associates acted in self-defense.
Gaulden, who was raised by his grandmother, attended Scotlandville High School but dropped out in the ninth grade. Not long after, he began writing lyrics while serving time at a juvenile detention center in Tallulah for robbery. Those lyrics would later be used in his debut project, “Life Before Fame,” which was released in 2015.
Since then, his raw and raunchy lyrics — often depicting the harsh realities of street life in Baton Rouge — and prolific output, including mixtapes released from East Baton Rouge Parish Prison, have propelled him into one of the most popular rappers heard by Generation Z. YoungBoy has sold more than 18 million digital singles in the United States, amassed more than 15 billion views on YouTube, and became the youngest artist ever to chart 100 singles on the Billboard Hot 100.
Currently performing under the moniker “YoungBoy Never Broke Again,” Gaulden was scheduled to begin a tour in September, before the presidential pardon was announced. The MASA Tour 2025 will conclude in his home state, with YoungBoy now rapping as a free man, on Oct. 17 at the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans.
He is the latest high-profile rapper to be pardoned by the president, joining Kodak Black, Lil Wayne and A$AP Rocky 2021.
