Joey Bada$$

Jo-Vaughn Virginie Scott, known professionally as Joey Badass, is an American rapper and actor. Born in Brooklyn, New York City, he formed the regional hip-hop group Pro Era in 2011, with whom he has released three mixtapes and formed the larger collective, Beast Coast the following year.

Joey Bada$$'s resurrection of boom bap production in the 2010s arrived not as nostalgia but as necessity—a Brooklyn native refusing to let the borough's sonic DNA dissolve into the trap-dominated mainstream. After establishing Pro Era as a creative laboratory for lyrical rigor, he refined that ethos across *B4.DA.$$* and *All-Amerikkkan Bada$$*, albums that positioned him as a philosophical counterweight to the streaming era's content overload. His kinship with Flatbush Zombies cemented a broader Beast Coast movement that proved underground crews could still command cultural relevance without compromising their aesthetic vision. Whether threading cinematic production through deeply personal storytelling or leveraging his acting career as a parallel creative outlet, Joey never treated rap as the only vehicle for his ambition—a rarity among his peers that speaks to his artistic seriousness.