YoungBoy Never Broke Again

YoungBoy Never Broke Again — aka NBA YoungBoy — is soon to go on trial on federal gun charges. The Baton Rouge artist was arrested along with 15 others in 2020 on suspicion of possession of stolen firearms and distributing drugs, and today, Rolling Stone reports that the trial date has been set for May 16 in Louisiana’s Middle District. The rapper entered a preliminary plea of “not guilty” to charges of possession of an unregistered firearm by a felon and has been on house arrest since October.

However, he’s got reason to be optimistic about the outcome of the trial. At the end of February, US District Court Chief Judge Shelly Dick ruled that video evidence of YoungBoy brandishing the firearms in question was invalid due to an unlawful search of the SD card containing it. While an anonymous 911 call about men brandishing guns prompted police to break up what was reported as a rap video shoot in September 2020, the warrant only mentioned the video, while the warrant made no mentions of the SD cards or video equipment.

YoungBoy’s defense filed a motion to have the evidence suppressed, which Dick granted after deeming the warrant — and the resulting search that turned up the would-be incriminating evidence — invalid. The rapper’s defense lawyer Drew Findling said of the upcoming trial, “We’re 100 percent convinced of his innocence, and now we have to continue to evaluate our strategy. The unconstitutionality of law enforcement was clearly evident to the court and resulted in a slew of evidence being thrown out. We’re looking forward to going to court.”

YoungBoy Never Broke Again is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The federal firearms case against Louisiana rapper YoungBoy Never Broke Again — NBA YoungBoy for short — has suffered a blow as a judge dismissed photographic evidence against the rapper due to questions about how it was obtained. YoungBoy’s legal team had filed a motion to suppress the evidence, an SD card containing both photos and evidence of YoungBoy brandishing firearms — which the rapper can’t do as a convicted felon. XXL magazine initially reported the development in the case via court documents seen by XXL’s reporter.

Baton Rouge police arrested YoungBoy, along with several others, after responding to a call that “a group of people was on Chippewa Street carrying firearms and filming a rap music video” in September of 2020. YoungBoy’s lawyers argued that the officer who applied for the search warrants issued for several vehicles that fled the arrest used “falsehoods” and omitted information in his applications. As the SD card and a firearm were found in an Acura belonging to YoungBoy’s cameraman behind those warrants, the judge presiding over the case granted YoungBoy’s motion to suppress the evidence on the grounds that the warrant only covered the search of the vehicles, not the camera or SD cards.

However, the judge refused the motion to dismiss the firearm itself. Authorities will have to successfully argue that YoungBoy possessed the weapon at the time of arrest without the help of the photos that allegedly prove it. That doesn’t mean the rapper is completely off the hook, though; he still faces similar charges in Los Angeles for a separate arrest in 2021. The troubled rapper’s home was also raided earlier this year.