NBA YoungBoy says retirement is one or two albums away

NBA YoungBoy says he may have one or two albums left before he steps away from music. The 26-year-old rapper made the comments on the Open Thoughts podcast with host Funny Marco, filmed from Korea, where he has spent several months living with his family. He said he plans to tour just one more time in his life.

In the same conversation, YoungBoy said the left side of his heart is still enlarged, after a doctor found it swollen mid-tour. "I never told nobody, I just kept doing every show," he said, adding that he finished the tour anyway.

YoungBoy, also known as YoungBoy Never Broke Again, has built one of rap's most prolific catalogs, releasing nine studio albums including four platinum records: Until Death Call My Name, Top, Sincerely, Kentrell and The Last Slimeto. He put out two projects this year alone, Slime Cry in January and ML2 in June, and by 2023 had become the youngest artist to reach 100 entries on the Billboard Hot 100.

The comments follow a stretch of legal trouble, including a 2024 guilty plea to firearm possession as a convicted felon that led to a 23-month federal sentence, before President Trump pardoned him in May 2025. YoungBoy has said he has no plans to return to the United States, and his American YoungBoy documentary earned over $1 million in its first week at the box office.

He did not attach a firm date to any of it, and an artist musing about retirement is not the same as an actual retirement. Still, pairing a health scare with a hard number on albums left reads as more than an offhand remark from an artist who has built a career on constant output. MusicSuey has also covered what he says he earned per show and his earlier account of the heart trouble pulling him back from music in the days around this news.