From a 33-Year Offer to the Mic, Wakkbabii Talks Jail, Music and More

The first deal on the table was 33 years. Wakkbabii was 15, about to turn 16, and his answer was simple. He wasn’t signing anything, because he said he hadn’t done anything.

Now 18, the North Side Pittsburgh rapper (pronounced Wak-Baby) sat down with First Impressions TV for Episode 6 in September 2026 to talk about beating that case, why he thinks jail may have saved his life, the beats he picks to throw people off, and the music videos he and his crew are about to start dropping.

Rapping Since Age 4 & Growing Up On Pittsburgh’s North Side

Born and raised on the North Side, Wakkbabii said he has been rapping since he was about 4. It shows. He’s the first guest on First Impressions TV’s First Take to come in and freestyle straight off the top of his head.

He kept the intro loose. His friend BG, known as theyhate9_ on Instagram, joined on FaceTime to say what’s up. When the interviewer assumed an 18-year-old was fresh out of high school, Wakkbabii chuckled and said he hadn’t graduated. The interviewer admitted he hadn’t either, and Wakkbabii grinned: “so what we just alike.”

KUKU, Paygo and the Videos That Never Drop

A recent YouTube upload, “KUKU,” features Bg009, Slatt and Woubzz09. Wakkbabii checked with his friend on the phone to get the story straight. They made it in the hood at one of the guys’ houses, around four months before the interview, and that friend has since moved out of the hood.

Asked about his release plans, he put the blame on Paygo, one of his affiliates, for sitting on finished music videos and never sending them over. He was clearly having fun with it, saying he was acting like that today.

On First Impressions TV’s Mic Tap, he performed “Sh*t You Neva Seen,” a released track built on pain and storytelling that sits away from his usual drill sound. The story behind it was short. He said he was high, the memories and lyrics came to him, and he got right to it.

He called Woubzz, Paygo and the rest of the artists he works with his brothers, all of them hard on the music, and confirmed the bond goes beyond the studio.

When His Friends Told Him to Turn It Up

That bond showed up in the middle of the interview. After a few short answers, Woubzz, Jay Slatt and others in the room told him he nearly needed to redo it. He sounded too nonchalant, they said, like he wanted to get it over with. Wakkbabii pushed back. This is how he talks to them every day, he said, and this is him being himself.

His friend on FaceTime sided with the room. Another friend off camera reminded him what they’d talked about before the cameras rolled: this was his platform to go all out, and he was acting shy at the moment he was supposed to shine. When that friend pointed out that rappers bring energy and tell stories in interviews, Wakkbabii jumped up and joked that he isn’t a rapper.

He looked a little annoyed. It was also obvious his friends cared about him and wanted to see him do his best. When the interview picked back up, he had more to say.

Social Media, Hotboii and Beats Nobody Else Would Pick

His reels and snippets tend to do well, but he isn’t sentimental about social media. He said it’s hard to hold anyone’s attention now. People see rappers all over Instagram and TikTok every day and scroll right past, and most guys would rather like a post of a fine girl than good music.

His advice for standing out is to lean into whatever people don’t like about you. Keep doing it, he said, because that’s what everyone else ends up liking. If someone keeps talking about what you’re doing, they’re clearly watching.

Plenty of listeners assume he’s from Florida because of how his voice sounds when he raps. He jokingly called anyone who thinks that racist. He said he doesn’t listen to much Florida music, but his favorite industry rapper is Hotboii and his second favorite is YNW Melly, both from Florida. The music he actually plays most is his friends’, and he said everyone already knows that.

His beat choices are deliberate. He looks for beats that make people wonder how he even raps on them. Anyone can grab an RVA beat, a Baby Trench type beat or a Hood Tali type beat, and those will hit every time, he said. But they aren’t unique, and people get tired of hearing them.

Beating His Homicide Case and What Jail Taught Him

The case came up when the interview turned serious. On November 22, 2023, A 26 year old was shot and killed through the front door of his home on Benwood Avenue in Stowe Township. Wakkbabii was 15 when he was charged with criminal homicide, conspiracy and gun charges. In March 2026, a jury found him not guilty on all counts.

The prosecution’s case rested mostly on testimony from an adult co-defendant who had taken a plea deal that dropped his own homicide charge in exchange for naming Woods as the shooter. Defense attorney Randall McKinney argued that testimony was self-serving and unreliable. Prosecutors had no forensic or physical evidence tying Woods to the gun, and the home security footage was too unclear to show who fired.

Wakkbabii said that when he first went down, he didn’t take it seriously. He was young and didn’t understand how the world worked yet. In his mind he was innocent, and he believed being innocent was enough to set him free.

The juvenile pod didn’t drive the weight of it home, he said. Trial did. That’s when he started hearing the deals and the charges and what could happen, and things got real. He felt the system was trying to fry him. The first deal he was offered was 33 years.

Even then, he admitted, he didn’t take it all the way seriously. He believed they were trying to lock him up as long as they could. Other people in his position might have folded, he said, but his mindset was that they were trying to cook him, he wasn’t dumb, and he wasn’t signing anything because he didn’t do it.

Asked what being locked up was like, his answer wasn’t what you might expect. Jail, he said, is probably what saved his life. Looking back, he needed a sit down. It made him a better person and helped him think better and move smarter. Because he was innocent, it felt like a setup at first, and he kept asking why he was in there. Over time, he said, what he learned inside taught him how to move better in life.

Big Vids on the Way

Next up is music videos, which he called the main thing coming. He’s been putting out audios but hasn’t settled on a plan. Some of his brothers say drop songs as soon as they’re ready. Others say wait for the videos.

He knows how little it takes to lose a listener. A boring cover gets skipped. A bad-looking video gets skipped. If the track sounds like it was made on BandLab, he said, nine out of ten people are clicking past it.

He was honest about the money. They aren’t rich, they aren’t industry artists, and they can’t pay for a video every two or three days. So he and his guys invested in a camera and the right equipment to shoot it themselves. The editing, he noted, takes a while.

For anyone chasing something, his advice was to just do it, even if you’re bad at first and even if the whole world is hating. If the whole world is hating, he said, the whole world is watching, and you’ll get paid in the end.

Then came the question First Impressions TV asks every guest: a positive message for the youth. He said he didn’t know, and that they shouldn’t listen to him. The interviewer tossed him an easy one, stay in school. Wakkbabii’s answer, to laughs around the room, was if you want.