Cordae Explained His Decision To Drop The ‘YBN’ From His Name

In what’s already been a more tumultuous summer than the rapper hoped for, Cordae recently landed new headlines after his former YBN groupmate YBN Nahmir said that he and YBN Jay Almighty departed from the collective. “They left this YBN sh*t in the gutter,” Nahmir said in a tweet. “Remember that. I’ll turn it up myself.” Almost a month after that tweet, the former YBN Cordae, now Cordae, explained his decision to depart the collective in an interview with Tidal’s Elliot Wilson.

“Namir and Jay, those always gonna be my brothers, in real life,” Cordae said. “Like, I think the world of them cats. Sometimes as friends, you grow apart and you have different visions for what you wanna do and that’s OK, there’s no love lost. Like I said, I think the world of them n*ggas. I love my n*gga Jay to death and yeah, that’s just that really.”

Cordae’s explanation arrives after the rapper teamed up with Roddy Ricch for their soulful new single, “Gifted.” In the interview with Wilson, Cordae also explained how his collaboration with Roddy came to life. “Me and Roddy, low-key, that’s one of my closest homies in music. We just always linked. That’s somebody I can call and we just have real life conversations. We did that joint after the Real Street Fest… we was both on that festival and we went to the studio right after and came up with that joint.”

Watch Cordae explain his decision and the “Gifted” collab in the videos above.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.