Yvng Swag

Tyshawn Johnson entered the world in 1999 in Chestertown, Maryland. Early passions for both music and dance prompted him, while still a teenager, to upload dance footage online under the name Yvng Swag; these clips spread across Vine, YouTube, and Instagram, drawing hundreds of thousands of followers in short order. One 2016 clip in particular, the “Big Green Tractor Remix,” exploded to millions of views by showing the young rapper moving to a country original rebuilt around a heavy trap beat. That online traction earned him a contract with All Def Digital Co., the Def Jam imprint. Shifting focus from dance to recorded music, he issued his first single, “Fall in Luv,” near the end of 2016 and followed it several months later with “Hit My Phone.” His debut EP, 32 Teeth, arrived in November 2017. A steady stream of singles appeared throughout 2018, among them the collaborations “Afterlife” with ItsAMovie and “Flamingo Star” with Pedrito Vm; the latter cut was included on Yvng Swag’s 2019 album Small Town Act.