I Just Got A Lot On My Shoulders

If a year goes by without a new release from YoungBoy, it’s safe to assume that the circumstances are dire. Compared to his mind-bogglingly prolific output in recent years (one album and six mixtapes in 2022, two albums and two mixtapes in 2023), the Baton Rouge rapper’s relative silence in 2024 spoke volumes. YB had initially set the release date for his seventh studio album (and the last under his Motown contract) in April. But days before the album’s intended release, he was arrested on a number of charges, spending much of the year in a Utah county jail. Nevertheless, *I Just Got a Lot on My Shoulders*, whose release was prompted by a recent hack of YB’s iCloud, presents the rapper as a complicated antihero—a 25-year-old man carrying the weight of the world. He battles familiar demons late at night on “Killa Season,” snarling, “I ain’t never happy, I’m evil as fuck.” His semi-recent turn to Mormonism seems to have curdled as he returns to his old vices on “Catch Me” and “Never Stopping.” And yet he’s still speaking directly to those in the struggle on songs like “Hope You Make It,” where he quotes an old refrain from his late grandmother: “All you need is faith.”