YungManny Is the Trash-Talking Teen Taking the DMV by Storm

The 15-year-old rapper is turning Disney references into bars about mayhem and blowing up in the process.
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In August, I stumbled across a mixtape on YouTube titled, Hey Manny, and heard these four bars: “He stay with a rat, Stuart Little/I call him Malcolm, he get shot in the middle/I pull up with four niggas like The Wiggles/Serve on a bus, nigga Ms. Frizzle.” I asked myself, “What in the hell am I listening to?!” I could tell from the brooding, horror movie piano keys, that this was hip-hop from the DMV area, but I had to know more about this artist who used PG pop culture references to make R-rated threats. What I found was a 15-year-old rapper from Hillmeade, Md., who points power drills at the camera instead of the usual guns and is putting his own spin on DMV rap cadences.

There is an ongoing debate—mostly happening in YouTube video comment sections—about whether all DMV rappers sound the same. The emerging “DMV flow,” often associated with Maryland’s Goonew, is a menacing half-whisper with sudden bursts of energy and rhymes loaded with non sequiturs. YungManny, however, trades in the creepiness and simmering hostility of Goonew’s style for a loud-mouthed aggression reminiscent of Prince George’s County, Md. spitter Q Da Fool. Manny is an amalgamation of the scene’s larger-than-life personalities which makes his own style feel refreshingly new.

Though I was intoxicated by the fresh sound of Hey Manny, I was still hesitant to take a 15-year-old prancing around with flexes like, “I’m watchin’ Disney Channel in the trap,” seriously. Then Manny dropped a music video for “Bonfire Pt. 2” that completely leaned into his over-the-top personality and showed me the light. The video begins with Manny choosing a weapon; deciding whether to pick up the gun or the power drill laying before him on a table. He picks the drill. A dark piano key ushers in the track, the drums drop, and Manny hops on the beat in a high-energy bounce, in which he spends the first two lines spitting in sound effects: “Bllllttttt, ring ring, hello?/I got a Glock and I unh.” He then mimics Nick Cannon banging his snare in Drumline with the power drills as he says, “Feel like Nick Cannon, bahh, Drumline/Nigga bluffin’ only seen a gun one time,” and even blows a kiss to the camera proclaiming, “I got one more bullet for you and your brother/Put the Glock to your lips, mwah, pucker.” I watched it again and again, always picking up something new to fixate on, before realizing that with every viewing YungManny was becoming one of my favorite rappers of the moment.

For me, YungManny’s appeal isn’t pegged to a single song or mixtape; instead, it’s the humorous puns and clever threats spread throughout his growing catalog that grab me. Behind all of the theatrics and charisma is a rapper helping to make the current DMV wave more accessible to the masses. Because if hip-hop loves anything, it’s teens like YungManny talking their shit.