There was a time when YBC looked like a real success story in the making. Just a bunch of kids from one of Philly’s poorest neighborhoods trying to use rap as their way out. But once drill music entered the picture, everything changed. Diss tracks stopped sounding like music and started sounding like direct threats.
Social media turned murders into clout and every new body became part of the online war. Then one rapper took the disrespect even further than anybody else. His bars were so ruthless that even other drill artists felt like he was crossing the line. And as his name started blowing up online, the violence around him exploded, too.
So, how did one young rappers music end up fueling one of the deadliest gang wars in Philly? To understand that, we got to go back to the beginning. You see, the Young Bag Chasers, better known as YBC, got their name from something simple at first. It was just a bunch of young dudes from West Philly trying to chase a bag and make something out of nothing.
Back then, nobody looking at them could have guessed they’d eventually become one of the most feared clicks in the city. Around 2017, everything started off innocent enough. Most of them grew up around Belmont Charter School and the section of West Philly known as the bottom, an area stretching through Manua, Belmont, and West Powell.
For decades, that neighborhood had been crushed by poverty. Families there survived on less than $34,000 a year on average, according to census data. Abandoned houses sat on corners where children still play basketball and rode bikes through trash filled alleys. Despite all that, the boys formed tight bonds early.
Summers were spent hooping at 39th Street playground, wrestling each other outside or playing football for the Parkside Saints. At night, they’d pile into somebody’s living room floor for sleepovers, laughing and joking like real brothers. They proudly called themselves the Bottom Boys because that’s exactly where they came from.
And honestly, that brotherhood became necessary. A lot of their home lives were rough. Some had fathers who were dead, locked up, or completely missing. Others grew up around addiction, drug dealing, and constant instability. Many of them were surviving below the poverty line, sharing clothes, food, and support however they could.
Their friends, mothers, and grandmothers became everybody’s family. One moment showed just how deep that bond went. After one boy lost both of his parents, Lee said he and the others had to help enroll him in school themselves. They were only 12 years old. Handling responsibilities most adults struggle with. To them, depending on each other wasn’t optional.
It was survival. The struggles surrounding those boys didn’t appear overnight either. Their neighborhood carried the scars of decades of systemic racism. Back in the 1930s, the area had been redlined and labeled hazardous, cutting black families off from investment and opportunity for generations. Then came the crack epidemic, followed by mass incarceration, which tore even more families apart.
The environment around them reflected all of it. Empty homes, underfunded schools, trash covered streets, constant violence. Still, Belmont Charter gave some of those boys a rare outlet. Music class became their safe place. It was where they learned rhythm, songwriting, and storytelling. At first, they made harmless songs about bullying, recycling, and everyday life.
Some even wrote about the realities of growing up black in America. They’d take what they learned back home, sit over tiny keyboards and cheap equipment, and spend hours creating music together. One of the brightest talents in the group was Taji Brooks. Tall, skinny, and known for his light green eyes, Brooks had a natural ability to tell stories through music.
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He started rapping around age 12 just for fun. But by 2017, at only 16 years old, he began releasing tracks under the name J 100. It didn’t take long before his music started buzzing around the city. To the rest of the crew, Brooks looked like hope. They truly believed he was their ticket out, the one person who could finally pull everybody into a better life.
As more of the boys started dropping music themselves, they realized they needed a real identity, a name that represented exactly what they were after, money. That’s when they landed on Young Bag Chasers, also known as Young’s Bout Chicken, with chicken being Philly slang for cash. From that moment on, they became known simply as YBC.
By this point, most of the YBC boys were already well known to local police. These weren’t kids just getting into little trouble here and there. A lot of them had already started smoking weed, stealing bikes, fighting in school, and getting expelled before they even turned 12 years old. At the end of the day though, they were still kids trying to fit in like everybody else.
They wanted fresh sneakers, designer clothes, game systems, and attention from girls. But most of their families were struggling just to keep food in the crib, so there wasn’t extra money laying around for any of that. That’s when the older dudes around the neighborhood started showing them another way. The boys watched teenagers on the block making quick cash every day.
And eventually some of those older guys pulled them into the streets, too. Before long, selling drugs started looking normal. To them, it felt like the fastest way to get money without waiting on anybody to save them. Some of the boys were reportedly selling crack as early as 9 years old, but most lean toward marijuana.
Around that time, weed was starting to get decriminalized, so it became the perfect hustle for young kids trying to eat. They didn’t have to stand on dangerous corners all day like older dealers. And if police caught them as juveniles, the punishment usually wasn’t serious. But while the drug money started coming in, another change was happening, too.
Most of them began carrying guns. In their minds, it was simple math. They felt safer risking jail than ending up dead. So even if some of them didn’t plan on using a weapon, they still kept one nearby at all times. In West Philly, fear and survival were already becoming part of everyday life. Then Joshua Mson got killed.
And after that, nothing stayed the same. Teenagers from rival neighborhoods started mocking his death online and recording disrespectful disc songs. Social media turned grief into entertainment overnight. Suddenly, everybody was picking sides and the tension spreading through West Philly became impossible to ignore.
Even Meek Mill noticed what was happening. He saw the talent coming out of YBC and the other young crews around the city, but he also saw how close they all were to destroying themselves. At one point, he even posted online about how talented the young guys from Philly were while pointing out that they were all beefing with each other, and he actually tried to stop it.
Toward the end of 2019, Meek brought different sides together in the same room, hoping to squash the tension before more blood got spilled. Surprisingly, for a brief moment, it looked like it worked. Guys who had been dissing each other shook hands, talked things out, and even agreed to record music together as a peace move.
Meek was excited enough afterward to post about it online, believing real progress had finally been made. But the piece didn’t last. The song they planned to record together never even happened. And within a few months, the truce completely fell apart. By then, the situation had gone way beyond rap music.
Pride, revenge, and real street politics had taken over. YBC’s music became darker after Mson’s death. The lyrics got more disrespectful, more violent, and way more personal. The boys started tattooing Josh World across their faces, arms, and hands, making it clear they were carrying Mson’s name everywhere they went.
Anybody disrespecting him instantly became an enemy in their eyes. And after that, the shootings started piling up. In the months and years after Joshua Mson’s death, a lot of YBC members became completely locked in on the growing drill rap scene. They sat back watching rappers like Chief Keef and Lil Durk turn street pain into worldwide fame.
Everywhere they looked, kids with no connection to Chicago were blasting drill music, screaming disrespect toward rivals, and treating real violence like entertainment. But what really caught their attention was the money. These boys saw Chief Keef land a multi-million dollar deal before he was even old enough to legally drink.
To teenagers growing up broken West Philly, that looked like proof. Proof that pain, disrespect, and chaos could actually become a way out. So YBC started expanding. Around this time, they began linking with rising rappers from north and northwest Philly. One of the biggest connections came through Samaj Nolan, better known on the streets as Reek 12 Hunet, a teenager from the area around 12th and Susuana.
Nolan was tied to a younger click called the Young Face Arangers or YFA. Even at a young age, YFA already had a reputation around the city for violence and shootings. They weren’t just little kids making music. They already had serious street names attached to them. From prison, where Nolan is currently serving a life sentence for the murders of two teenagers, he later explained how everything came together.
He had known Taji Brooks through mutual family connections. And around 2020, when both of them were still teenagers, they started hopping on songs together. On the surface, it looked smart. Two buzzing artists connecting meant more fans, more streams, and more attention. But underneath all that music talk, something else came with the partnership.
More shooters, more protection, more enemies. Once the crews linked up, their problems became shared problems. Their beefs became connected, too. Before long, YFA and YBC were moving so closely together that people around Philly basically treated them like one giant crew. YFA even started getting called YBC’s little brothers. Then came the perfect storm.
The Corona virus pandemic shut the city down completely. Schools closed. Businesses locked their doors. The streets got quieter during the day, but way more dangerous at night. Shooting numbers across Philadelphia started exploding and right in the middle of all that chaos, the drill scene in Philly took off.
According to Nolan, a lot of these teenagers started taking advantage of the government unemployment programs that opened during the pandemic. Kids who barely had anything before suddenly figured out ways to file claims for unemployment benefits, PPP loans, and relief money. Some even signed up other people around the neighborhood just to collect extra cash.
For the first time in their lives, these young dudes had real money coming in consistently, hundreds every week, sometimes thousands at a time. But once everybody around the city suddenly had cash, the streets changed overnight. Prices on everything jumped crazy high. Weed prices doubled. Guns became harder to get and way more expensive.
Everybody wanted jewelry, designer clothes, cars, and weapons all at once. To Nolan, it felt like a generation of young people with no direction suddenly got handed money and freedom at the same time. And instead of things getting better, everything just spiraled harder. Between the new crew alliances, the pandemic money, and booming weed sales, YBC started making more money than ever before.
For the first time, they had steady income coming from multiple directions at once. And around this time, somebody stepped in to lead the movement. That person was Vick, better known as YBC Duel. At first glance, Dole didn’t really look intimidating. He was skinny, smallframed, and quiet at times. Originally from North Philly, he moved to the bottom when he was about 9 years old and quickly became part of that environment.
His teenage years were rough from the start. He spent time bouncing in and out of juvenile placement facilities over different crimes and eventually got kicked out of school because of constant fighting. Home life wasn’t much better either. His father struggled with addiction and because of Duel’s own behavior issues, there were nights he barely even went home, choosing instead to sleep on friends couches around the neighborhood.
To him, YBC wasn’t just a rap group. It was family. Now, musically, Duel wasn’t viewed as polished or naturally gifted the same way Taji Brooks was. But what he lacked as an artist, he made up for with his understanding of the business side of drill music. He saw exactly where the culture was headed.
He understood that controversy sold, disrespect soul, violence soul. And in December 2020, he made it official by creating Young Bag Chasers LLC, turning the crew into an actual business entity. By 2021, Duel started dropping his own music. Right. As YBC’s wars with rival groups around West Philly were getting worse.
Unlike some rappers who mixed street talk with regular storytelling, Dole leaned all the way into pure disrespect as shootings kept happening around the city. He used every nude death as material for another diss track. Eventually, it didn’t even matter whether somebody was truly involved in the beef or not.
Innocent people and mistaken victims became targets in songs, too. That level of disrespect wasn’t completely unique in drill music, but Dull pushed it further than most. And unfortunately, it worked. Every disc song pulled in huge numbers online. Views stacked into the hundreds of thousands and streaming money followed right behind it.
According to Nolan, YBC was bringing in close to $10,000 a month through YouTube and Spotify alone. Dull reportedly split the profits among members based on who was actively recording and pushing music the hardest. The crew stayed in the studio constantly recording song after song while the violence in the streets kept escalating around them.
As drill music kept growing, Dole’s reputation grew too. Fans started calling him mister. Disrespectful because of how ruthless his lyrics became in a genre already built around shock value and taunting enemies, Duel still found ways to cross lines most rappers wouldn’t touch. He mocked grieving families, disrespected dead teenagers, and even sampled speeches from Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner directly into his music.
But while the songs were blowing up online, they were also making legal situations worse for people around him. One example was the murder case involving the young man Kavon Lee killed. The victim reportedly had nothing to do with YBC’s actual street wars, but Dole still treated the situation like another body to brag about in music.
From prison in Frackville, Lee later admitted he used to call Dole constantly, begging him to stop mentioning the case in songs and stop disrespecting the victim publicly. But by that point, the music had become bigger than loyalty, consequences, or common sense. With every new diss track and every new shooting, YBC’s list of enemies kept getting longer.
By that point, they had beef stretching across almost every side of West Philly. Crews from 38th Street, 39th Street, 56th Street, Parkside, everywhere wanted smoke with them. The situation got so out of control that people were hunting YBC members who didn’t even personally know who their enemies were anymore.
Then came the summer of 2022. That’s when the whole foundation started cracking apart. In just two months, three major YBC members got killed. The losses hit the crew hard and suddenly the brotherhood they once bragged about started breaking from the inside. Arguments over money, loyalty, grief, and music collaborations created tension everywhere.
Everybody was hurting, but everybody was handling it differently, too. From prison, Kavon Lee started getting worried about his cousin, Taji Brooks. At one point, Lee called Brooks from jail trying to convince him to move away from the violent drill music and go back to making more melodic songs like he used to.
Lee had already seen where that road ended. Sitting behind bars, he kept warning Brooks not to follow the same path, but Brooks brushed it off like nothing could happen to him. The streets had already swallowed too much pride and too many young lives by then. On the night of December 6, 2022, rival crews allegedly learned Brooks was filming a music video at a house on the 4300 block of Paris Street.
While standing outside waiting for an Uber, he was ambushed and shot to death. That killing crushed YBC. To them, Brooks wasn’t just another rapper. He was the face of the movement. the one everybody believed could really make it out and bring the rest with him. His death felt like watching the dream die in real time.
But Abdul Vixs, better known as YBC Duel, refused to let the movement collapse. He saw himself as the one responsible for keeping YBC alive no matter what. In interviews online, he made it clear that too many people depended on him financially and emotionally for him to stop. And from there, Duel took things even deeper into the streets.
Soon, he started traveling out to California for weeks at a time, allegedly moving large amounts of marijuana across state lines. YBC slowly evolved into more than just a rap crew. It became a full-blown weed operation, too. The gang’s name carried so much attention online that people were paying extra money just to say they were smoking official YBC weed.
One member, Zire Crawford, reportedly admitted he was making around $1,500 a day just from selling marijuana. At the same time, Doll somehow kept avoiding serious legal trouble. As an adult, he was reportedly arrested only once. That happened in October 2022 after rivals allegedly shot up a South Philly Airbnb where Dull and his associates were staying.
According to prosecutors, officers caught him running out the back carrying a suitcase packed with pounds of weed. Even then, the case eventually got tossed after witnesses failed to appear in court. Just like that, D was back outside. Back to the music, back to the money, back to the war. People close to him insisted he wasn’t any worse than the rivals targeting him every day.
The truth was, D had already watched too many friends die. The trauma sat heavy on him. He even tattooed PTSD on his body, almost like a permanent reminder of the pain he carried around. At the same time, addiction was tearing him apart, too. After getting injured in a car crash, Dull reportedly became hooked on percoetses.
Eventually, that spiraled into drinking lean and constantly staying high. Interviews online showed a young man clearly trapped inside a self-destructive cycle, numbing himself while trying to outdo rivals in cruelty and disrespect. And the deeper he sank into drill culture, the more extreme the antics became.
When one of Doe’s close friends known as BK got killed, rivals mocked the death by filming videos at a Burger King. Later on, Duel allegedly retaliated by doing something similar after the killing of Zair Stafford, a rival whose family said he wasn’t even involved in gang politics himself. Stafford had simply been working a regular job at McDonald’s trying to provide for his two young daughters.
On December 7th, 2023, Stafford finished his shift and walked out into the cold North Philly night. He barely made it a couple blocks before a gunman jumped out and opened fire, hitting him over and over in the street. He later died at the hospital, still wearing his work uniform.
Soon after, people online connected the murder to YBC. Then the mocking started. Dull allegedly used McDonald’s themes and song titles, cover art, and even marijuana packaging tied to his brand. One music video in particular gained massive attention online because of how disturbing it was. The video mixed fast food imagery with violent scenes clearly meant to mock Stafford’s death.
Millions of people watched it. But what made the situation even darker was the fact that investigators reportedly believed Stafford himself wasn’t involved in the beef at all. Authorities said his brother had ties to rival conflicts, but Stafford became a target anyway simply because of association. His mother later expressed heartbreak publicly, saying she wished authorities put the same energy into solving her son’s murder as they did into other high-profile cases.
By that stage, even prosecutors investigating the violence admitted it had become nearly impossible to track everything connected to Y BC and its rivals. shootings, retaliation, social media threats, diss tracks, it all blended together into one giant cycle of chaos. Officials estimated that in less than a year leading into 2024, more than 30 shootings were connected in some way to the group and its surrounding feuds.
But because so many cases stayed unsolved and because gangs often claimed shootings they didn’t even commit, the true number was hard to pin down. Prosecutors explained that the violence and music had become completely intertwined. The more bodies attached to a crew’s name, the bigger their music numbers got online.
Street reputation now translated directly into internet fame. And according to investigators, Duel himself openly admitted that reality in interviews. To prosecutors listening afterward, it sounded like he viewed death almost like fuel for business. More violence meant more music. More music meant more streams, attention, and money.
Bodies had become marketing. Then in August 2024, YouTuber Brandon Buckingham uploaded a documentary style video centered around YBC Dole and the violence surrounding Philly’s drill scene. The video quickly spread online. Buckingham followed Dull through West Philadelphia while members of the crew flashed guns, walked through abandoned houses, and openly talked about the war happening around them.
During parts of the interview, Dole appeared almost proud of how empty and quiet certain blocks had become because of the fear connected to the violence. At one point, Buckingham directly asked whether walking around with so many enemies made him nervous. Dull answered calmly, basically implying that anybody around him should be more worried than he was.
Later in the video, gunshots could actually be heard echoing nearby. at once nighttime hit. But even hearing that, Dole continued speaking confidently, bragging about how the violence had turned whole neighborhoods into ghost towns where hardly anybody wanted to come outside anymore. Then, less than 24 hours after the documentary dropped, social media exploded with rumors.
A Reddit user posted three short words announcing Duel’s death before official news outlets even confirmed it. For people familiar with Philly street culture, that was already enough to know something terrible had happened. Soon after, reports confirmed the shooting. Duel and his manager, Baby 35 Saint, were sitting inside a vehicle behind a bus on Oni Avenue when a white SUV reportedly pulled alongside them.
>> >> Gunfire erupted into the car, striking Duel multiple times. In panic, his manager first stopped at a nearby house before eventually rushing him to Albert Einstein Medical Center. But it was already too late. YBC Dole was pronounced dead shortly afterward. Right after YBC Dole was killed, investigators from the DA’s office managed to lock down the exact location of the shooting thanks to a video spreading all over social media.
The footage looks straight out of a movie. A white SUV was sitting at a red light behind a SEPTA bus on North Fairill Street when another white SUV suddenly pulled up beside it in the opposite lane. Seconds later, gunfire exploded through the night. Bullets tore into the first vehicle before the shooters sped off.
Moments after the attack, the SUV carrying Dole could be seen racing away from the scene in panic. That video ended up becoming one of the biggest pieces of evidence in the entire case. Eventually, police charged three young people in connection to the murder. What shocked a lot of people was their ages.
The suspects were reportedly between just 14 and 18 years old. All allegedly tied to a lesserk known crew out of the first arrest came on September 6th, 2024 when police picked up a 16-year-old named Aiden Waters. Investigators say the shooters tried hard to erase evidence after the killing. The alleged getaway SUV was later found burned up in a lot on North 15th Street.
But despite the fire damage, detectives were still able to trace the vehicle back to Waters’s home before it had been dumped. Then came the house raid. According to investigators, police recovered a firearm linked not only to Dole’s murder, but also to two separate shootings that had happened just days earlier.
Authorities also claimed Waters already had a violent reputation before the YBC Doll case even happened. Just days before Dole’s death, police alleged Waters opened fire on a vehicle carrying five teenagers in killing another 16-year-old. Investigators also connected him to another shooting in Longest earlier that same day where two people were wounded.
Police said Waters was tied to a group known as Fastreak operating out of Oni. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Kraner later referred to Fast Break as a shooting group, a phrase that quickly sparked reactions online because critics had already accused Kraner for years of downplaying Philadelphia’s gang problem by avoiding the word gang.
But whatever label people wanted to use, investigators believe Fastreak’s reputation centered around violence, retaliation, and chasing street notoriety. Then in October 2024, authorities announced another arrest. An 18-year-old named Rashawn Williams was charged for his alleged role in the shooting as well.
Not long after that, a third suspect entered the case. 19-year-old Na Brisco was arrested and charged with murder and related offenses connected to Dole’s death. Prosecutors also tied Brisco to another homicide that happened during the exact same week. Authorities haven’t publicly explained every detail about Brisco’s alleged role, but investigators claim both he and Waters were part of the group that opened fire on the car that night in.
Then another disturbing detail surfaced. Police reportedly recovered surveillance footage showing the reaction of one teenager after learning Dole had been killed. Instead of fear or shock, investigators said the teens celebrated immediately, acting excited over what the murder meant for their crew’s reputation.
Because by that point, the streets had already taught these kids something dangerous. Clout mattered more than consequences. And ironically, even after Dole’s death, YBC continued making money off his image. His YouTube and Instagram pages stayed active, continuing to release old songs and unreleased material he had recorded before being killed.
Online numbers kept climbing too. Millions of views continued pouring into his music videos while his social media following kept growing even after his death. Meanwhile, Duel’s family wanted little to do with the media attention surrounding the case. His mother, Candace Sanders, spoke only briefly in court.
She described her son as a talented young man who genuinely believed music could change his life and help him take care of the people around him. She pushed back heavily against the public image many had created of him and insisted he wasn’t some mastermind gang leader. The threats surrounding the case became so serious that city officials reportedly helped relocate her for safety reasons.
And despite all the money duel appeared to be making online, law enforcement sources claimed very little of it remained after his death. According to reports, almost none of that money ever reached his family. After Dul was killed, the image YBC spent years building slowly started collapsing. Members sitting in prison reportedly felt abandoned with barely any money being sent to them anymore.
Some began publicly distancing themselves from the crew altogether. Others allegedly started cooperating with authorities or turning on one another behind closed doors. The brotherhood that once looked untouchable from the outside was falling apart piece by piece. And in the end, Dole’s death exposed something a lot of young people caught up in drill culture fail to realize until it’s too late.
The lifestyle promising fame, money, and respect usually ends in only two places. A prison cell or a graveyard. What made the story even sadder was the fact that underneath all the violence and controversy, Dole reportedly did have dreams beyond the streets. During his interview with Brandon Buckingham, there were moments where the tough image slipped for a second and people got to see the young man underneath all the chaos.
Duel admitted that street life had become deeply tied to who he was growing up, but he also explained that rap was supposed to be his escape route. In his mind, music was meant to pull him and the people around him out of poverty. But somewhere along the way, the violence swallowed everything else. Still, he talked about wanting to give back someday.
He spoke about building shelters, helping his neighborhood, and doing something positive for the same community that raised him. At one point during the interview, Buckingham challenged him about the contradiction between destroying neighborhoods through violence and later wanting to help fix them. And Dole’s answer sounded less like arrogance and more like somebody realizing too late how badly things had already spiraled.
According to Buckingham, Dull admitted the original plan was never to destroy everything around them. The goal had simply been getting rich and escaping the struggle. But somewhere in the middle of chasing money, fame, and revenge, everything went completely off the rails.
