The tragic accident that almost killed NBA Youngboy: “I was wrestling”
When NBA YoungBoy first started breaking into prominence in the music scene, he was still just a fresh-faced teenager. But, despite his youth, he nonetheless bore some interesting lines on his skin that made him stand out from other kids his age.
YoungBoy has a set of scars on his forehead, which, even as a teenager, made him look older than he was. It turns out that he picked up these marks at a very young age—and in scarily gruesome fashion.
When he was a very young child, aged just four, YoungBoy was play-fighting with someone, as kids often do. But this time it went badly wrong. “I was wrestling,” he once told XXL, “and I broke my neck.”
It was this horrific injury that led to the scars on his forehead, although not directly. It wasn’t that the break itself left him scarred, but, rather, it was the treatment to help fix him up afterwards that did it. He had to wear a special sort of brace following the break.
“I had to get a halo in my head with the screws, four years old,” he remarked, referring to a halo brace that can be used to stabilise people who have suffered neck or back injuries. These can be very helpful devices, but their usage is not without consequence. They’re literally screwed into the skull.
It was from wearing one of these halo braces at such a young age that YoungBoy was left with the deep scars on his head. It sounds like a gnarly, painful experience, but, in the end, it seems it was worth it. He made a recovery and later became a star.
The nature of an injury like the one NBA YoungBoy suffered is really serious, and he could easily have died because of it. He knows he was lucky to get away from the ordeal with his life, and he personally credits his faith for it. “God blessed me,” he said. “I’m a blessed child.”
This story adds a further dimension to YoungBoy’s stage name. The “NBA” part stands for “Never Broke Again,” which he selected as a way of expressing his desire to make it as a musician and to never slip into poverty again.
But, when keeping the story of his neck-break in mind, it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to suggest that YoungBoy, consciously or otherwise, may have used his stage name to subtly reference the childhood injury that easily could have stolen his life. He didn’t ever want to be so broken again.