

YSN's lyrics are mostly fuelled by his experiences from age 16 and on, but on 2020's "World in my Palms," he references his childhood, rapping: "Never felt I belong in a white home." At the age of 17, he moved out of his adoptive family's home and has lived on and off with his birth mom since. His mom at first was skeptical, but he assured her that, "If I don't make it in rap by the age of 25, I'll go back to school." While YSN was adopted into a white family as a kid, he has always kept in touch with his birth mother, whom he's referring to in this interview. It took YSN several months in the studio before he graduated to the idea of, "OK, I'm pretty good." But about a year into it, YSN had committed to music as a career. One of the people who took notice was a local Winnipeg producer named Pascal Beats, who invited YSN to his studio to lay down some bars. He began posting freestyles on his Instagram account, which gradually gained attention. When his football dreams were quashed in 2018, he figured he would try his hand at music.
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If it wasn't for a knee injury (patellar tendinitis), YSN would likely be on your TV competing in CFL or NFL games right now. Instead, YSN concentrated all of his energy into sports, where he was lauded. "I didn't think I was bad," he notes, "I just never took it that seriously… But as a kid, you want validation and I never really received that." He notes that his younger brother was the one who got all the praise for rapping. He even hesitates to call what he had a talent because he never received positive reinforcement when it came to making music. When asked when he first discovered he was good at rapping, he takes a slight pause before responding: "Never, really." Perhaps the most revealing moments are when he admits he wasn't terribly confident when he first started making music. His answers to my questions are long, akin to jam-packed verses, but carefully considered. Over a Zoom call from Vancouver, where he's temporarily staying as a change of scenery during the pandemic, YSN Fab is just as assured, but decidedly more relaxed and open. (He's also capable of slowing things down and riding a melodic wave, though he admits he's still finding a balance between bars and melodies.) His drive is indomitable, and he makes that clear in his music, rapping on 2020's "Get Rich or Die Tryin": "I been counted out, shitted on, but it don't change the way I grind." He wastes no time diving headfirst into a trap beat, firing off bars at a rate that can give listeners whiplash.

He quickly catches himself, though: "I mean, you're probably going to hear that in my songs, for sure, but you know, we're going to keep it humble here!" "I'm not going to take the credit and be like, 'Oh, I'm the reason why everybody's rapping,'" he says, of the burgeoning Winnipeg hip-hop scene he's witnessing right now.

On multiple occasions throughout our hour-long talk, the 23-year-old would laugh at himself while discussing his music, his goals and the competitive nature of rap. That's what made my conversation with YSN Fab feel so refreshing. But it can feel rare to see the real person behind the bars sometimes. It's a braggadocious energy that almost every rapper flaunts in their music, and YSN Fab's stats back up his confidence, with millions of streams racked up in just four years. When you listen to a YSN Fab track, the young Winnipeg rapper isn't afraid to stake his claim as one of the city's biggest rising stars. That same year, Flow released his debut album, Long Story Short, which includes “Want Beef? 3.0,” the final installment of the series.Giving hope to my hopeless city, They've been waiting for a n-a like me to blow, and I'm ready.In 2020, after signing to Republic Records, Flow dropped the mixtape Flow $ZN, featuring the likes of Lil Tjay and Quando Rondo.The sequel surpassed 8 million streams across platforms. Flow served up “Want Beef? 2.0” a few months later.His prefatory 2019 single “Want Beef?” racked up more than 24 million streams across platforms and catapulted the rapper into the public eye.When his mom got laid off from her job, he started releasing music on streaming platforms to support the family. At 13 years old, after realizing he had a knack for music, Flow stole some speakers, put a glove over a microphone, and began recording on his mother’s laptop.Motivated by a desire to support his family, Cleveland rapper YSN Flow released a hit single, “Want Beef?”, that landed him a record deal before he even graduated high school.
