Breakthrough Atlanta hip hop star, Yung Booke, is celebrating Valentine’s Day giving dope vibes to the fans with the surprise release of his V-day inspired mixtape – Heartbreak 6.
Born Kedral Long Jr., Yung Booke is an Atlanta native hip hop artist from the Capitol Homes housing projects neighborhood.
“Coming up in Atlanta, there are a lot of drug dealers in the streets that have what you want– the fancy cars, the ice, pretty girls. I wanted that too,” admits Booke. “But my parents kept us in line by teaching us the right thing. My dad was on me like ‘ain’t no selling drugs. I didn’t sell drugs. You’re not selling drugs.’ I took that in and never went that way.”
So instead of slinging crack rock, Yung Booked kept his nose clean working on his wicked jump shot on the basketball court. “Sports kept my time preoccupied,” he says.
All of that changed during middle school when Booke got with a band of troublemakers. “There were a lot of distractions,” says Booke. “My crew was the crew that would go the party and beat you up and I got caught up in situations.”
It was one of these “situations” that steered him to rapping. Booke’s crew got into an altercation with another crew that made a diss song about Booke and his friends and passed the song out on CDs at school. In retaliation, Booke and his friends made a song of their own. But they knew they had to top the other guys.
So they took a radio into the school cafeteria and blasted it as loud as it could go at high noon. “We got everybody’s attention and we got the response that we wanted,” he boasts.
Booke also got the response that he wasn’t even expecting. “Everybody was like ‘you can rap?’” says Booke. “I saw the feedback and I was like ‘I kinda dig this.’”
Under the advice of friend Dwight “Skat” Daniels, Booke recorded his solo single “Swag Through the Roof.” Fresh out of the booth, they debut the record at Southwest Atlanta nightclub Figure 8’s Two Dollar Tuesdays promotion. The crowd went crazy.
Feeding off the frenzy, he hit the studio and dropped his underground debut mixtape Swageristic Living in 2009 under the moniker Flya. In the process, he initiated one of the biggest grassroots movements Atlanta had ever seen.
Booke came right back in 2010 with ghetto gold mixtape Airbourne Academy and Live from Capitol Homes in 2011 and made so much noise that word of this hot, new rapper made its to multi-platinum rapper Clifford “T.I.” Harris. At the time, T.I. was serving time in a federal penitentiary.
“When we first talked, I thought it was a prank,” Booke admits. “They told me “Tip is on the phone. He wants to holla at you.’ I hung up.”
It wasn’t until his dad called back did Booke realized it was no joke. “Tip was like ‘I been checking you out. When I get out and hit the ground, I wanna work with you, help you out.’ I automatically thought this is not happening. This ain’t even true. It seems surreal because T.I. is the only rapper that my grandma even knows.”
As soon as Tip got back to the free world, he called Booke up as promised and signed him to a recording deal with Grand Hustle. “When he got out, he kept his word. That’s something that I’m not used to,” he says. “When I met him, I was moved. Out of all the people, he wanted to sign me?!?”
In no time at all, they hit the studio. And in a few months, Booke made his Grand Hustle debut as one-third member of D.O.P.E. with fellow members Shad Da God and Spodee on their 2012 self-titled mixtape.
“When we’re in the studio, I’m trying to kill him on a song,” says Booke. “It’s friendly competition every time. And that’s what he respects about me because I hold my own.”
Over the next five years, Booke released numerous hot singles and four mixtape including – City on My Back 1, 2 & 3 and the very popular recent mixtape, 6 The Giant. Booke’s latest single, “H.I.T.V.”, off 6 the Giant, has rapidly became a radio and club sensation. Yung Booke is continuing the ATL tradition of setting music trends, becoming one of Atlanta’s hottest rappers out.
Check out the mixtape below.
