YungCelly (Brandon Prince) grew up living in Southern California. After his mother and father split, he has been coming up in the world with rarely a father in his life. With his mother struggling to make ends meet and moving from city to city YC has learned to adapt to alot of different enviroments which reflects his music today. Hip hop has always been apart of his life but when he moved back to Compton Ca. at 10 years old, it really sparked his interest. "Songs like We can Freak It by Kurupt, Hard Knock Life by Jay Z, Find My Way byTribe Called Quest, Still A G Thang By Snoop is what I grew up off of, in 1998 hip-hop was poppin!" YC says, sitting on the stairs smoking a blunt. Back then Compton was the place to be, or though it seemed. Living in Compton has greatly influenced who he is today. At around age 13 he saw his first hip hop battle and it was happening on his block. YC says, "When I got exposed to the battle scene it was something totally new to me because I never actually seen a battle in real life. I remember one guys name was Lil Smurf from the south (South Side Compton Crips) and another guy that was well known around the neighborhood for rapping and making albums, I dont remember his name though, But they were going at it, turned out to be a tie at the end." This is around the time Dr. Dre's Chronic 2001 dropped, hip hop was blazing! YC had alot of neighborhood friends, most were either into gangbanging or selling drugs, and occasionally some that just wanted to smoke weed and drink alcohol. YC says, "yea we all have had our ways, but hip hop has changed all of our lives in some kinda way for the better." In 2003 around the time when 50 Cent's Get Rich Or Die Trying came out YC knew without a doubt that he wanted to be a rap artist. "When one of my homies showed me 50's In The Club on the internet, the energy of the song and the beat was something I have never heard in my life. I loved it, it really pumped me up to get started with my art and soon to be career." At the same time he was going through a few tragic events in his life. As all the gangbanging going on would take it's toll, one of YC's closest friends named Dominique "Pig" Singleton got murdered. "After my little homie Pig got killed everything and everyone changed. The violence was getting worse and I was always out walking the streets always getting caught up in dangerous situations, my mother knew she had to get us out the hood and into much more calm place. Not only to be safe but to keep me on the right track, I'm blessed to have such a determined mother." Being hurt by the tragedy YC and his mother moved to Long Beach and experienced a different life style. "Long Beach has such a wide variety of life styles, when I use to go to Wilson High I was acting a fool, I fell back from rapping at that point because I had to meet new people and it was so much girls! But I always kept my composition [notebook] with me." This was around the time Drop It Like It's Hott by Snoop Dogg came out. Enjoying the Long Beach life style YC had yet more tragic events to go through. At home, His Mom's landlord didn't want to renew the lease they had on a backhouse, so they had to find a place fast. Turns out YC had to move 40 miles away to Covina Ca. This is where YC developed as an artist. Not being exepted into regular high school YC was forced to go to a continuation to finish school. Having bad experiences with past producers, he decides to set up his own production company. Him and a few of his peers have put out numerous amounts of songs together. YC knew it was more to hip hop than making songs and it always pushed him to learn more and more about how the industry works. Yung Celly recorded his first solo demo "Unborn" in 2005. With 17 original songs produced and recorded he managed to do it all by himself with little help from peers. Around this time the Internet is influencing alot more artist and the game is starting to change. YC didn't start using the internet till 2006 he says, "The Internet is a great power to many artist now a days, I dont see nothing wrong with putting up your work on the internet, just as long as you got a plan or you got things poppin already, dont think myspace will save from just uploading music. Have a plan!" At the same time he was recording his development demos, he has another tragedy in his life. His father has been murdered and his grandpa dies of cancer. Eversince his father passed the hat down to him he has been taking on the responsibilities of a man, and striving to make a better living for his family. A few demo albums later YungCelly has raked in over 100,000 plays on myspace by himself and the numbers will continue to go up as he gets stronger. He's pacing himself in the game doing shows and taking the best steps possible. Carefully deciding who's the best people to be around so when the time is right and the sales go up, and the money gets right, he will be in the most comfortable situation you can be in. YungCelly's music is a reflection of todays underground artist trying to make it in a hell of an industry. Check out the song 5150 produced by Tone Dickens @ www.myspace.com/yungcellymusic. Stay tuned into the music of YungCelly.
Interview by Dominique Hill

JustRealMC

USA4real

Khao