MASA

Last year, the Baton Rouge rapper’s relative silence spoke volumes. After a staggeringly prolific run in the previous years (one album and six mixtapes in 2022, two albums and two mixtapes in 2023), YoungBoy released just one record in 2024. Days before the intended release of his seventh album, *I Just Got a Lot on My Shoulders*, he was arrested on a number of charges, and he spent much of that year in a Utah county jail before receiving a 27-month prison sentence after accepting a plea deal in a federal gun case that had been ongoing for years. It was the latest in a seemingly endless series of setbacks for the rapper, whose “Legal issues” section on Wikipedia is nearly as long as the one for “Career.” YoungBoy’s 2025 has so far been much brighter, beginning with his release on probation in April after years of house arrest. Then, on May 28, he was granted a presidential pardon, ending the lengthy legal battle that had hampered his career for half a decade. This explains the newfound swell of patriotism at play in the title of his eighth studio album, *MASA* (short for *Make America Slime Again*), as well as in the triumphant “XXX,” which opens with “The Star-Spangled Banner” wailed on electric guitar before YB crows: “The police watching, but they ain’t gonna stop me!” The album’s 30 tracks are brighter than its world-weary predecessor, veering between bouncy Louisiana street rap (“Diesel”) and power ballads (“Cold World”). But he finds room here and there for a bit of introspection regarding his recent years: “Never knew how hard it’d get/Never knew it’d come to this,” he singsongs on “Where I Been” before concluding: “After all, I’m amazed that I conquered it.”