Rapper Lil Yachty is one of the biggest names in the game and has amassed a fortune of reportedly $25M since he cracked the rap scene in 2015 with his “bubblegum trap” music that took over an entire generation.
Older heads might describe Yachty’s eccentric style as mumble rap, but success came like an avalanche driven by social media. He released his debut mixtape “Lil Boat” in March 2016, and signed a joint venture record deal with Motown, Capitol Records, and Quality Control Music in June of that year.
Shannon Sharpe’s “Club Shay Shay” podcast continues to be the standard for revealing interviews by athletes and entertainers, where never-heard-before nuggets go viral.

His latest interview with the 27-year-old rap star from Georgia was no different as Yachty revealed that after receiving that mega major label deal in 2016 at the age of 18, he blew $1.3M in a week, spending $100K on veneers and purchasing $1M in diamond implants, plus he was dropping $100K monthly in expenses and not feeling it in his pockets at all.
Lil Yachty Got First Check At 18 For $1.3M: “I blew that check in one week. I went straight to Mercedes.”
Sharpe got straight to the money, asking Lil Yachty. “When you signed that big deal with Quality Control, what was the first thing you did when you got your first mill?
Lil Yachty replied: “I blew that check in a week.”
Shannon was blown away and asked Lil Yachty how much the check was for. He replied, “1.3 million”
To which Shannon said: “In a week? What the hell do you buy, New York City?”
“The second I got the check. I’ll never forget, I was in my mom’s house, and we lived in that same house my entire life. I had two for the homies they were living with me, and I had this real small room. I remember I signed the deal, but it took almost two to three weeks for the check to clear, so every day I woke up and checked my bank account. Woke up, not there. Woke up, not there. And one day I woke up … the mutha-fker was in there. I was screaming, ‘I’m rich.’”
Lil Yachty Went On Wild Spending Spree Buying Cars and Houses For Family
“I went straight to Mercedes. F-k u talking about G-Wagon, I need that. I can’t be in a G-Wagon if mama ain’t got a car,” so Yachty says he swiped that card and got her a Range Rover and a penthouse Then he says he got a car for his grandma.
He says he would run in the Gucci stores and ask for everything in every color. “I was going crazy,” Lil Yachty tells Sharpe. “I was 18. I was spending that money so quickly.”
Sharpe asked him what his reaction was to losing his money that quickly.
“I didn’t think about it,” said Yachty, whose first hit “One Night” was used in a viral video and sparked his fast rise with over 128 million views on YouTube.
“It was just gone. It took years for me to look at my bank account. I was making so much money and also, I was so hot. I spent a million in a week and probably made it back in the next two weeks. I was making so much money, and I didn’t even have the password to my bank account until I was 24.
My mom was my business manager, and she checked it but I never checked my bank account, and my card never declined. If I woke up and felt like I wanted a Bentley, I went out and got that Bentley
It was crazy it really didn’t make any sense how I was living; it was insane.”
As an established artist, brand and enterprise with movies and various entertainment accomplishments under his belt, Lil Yachty reflects on the careless spending he did in his youth with a more mature perspective.
“I think it’s all stupid,” he told Shannon Sharpe, who suggested Yachty trim his car collection from 13 to about 3. The rap star agreed saying, “You can only go one place at one time, what do you need so many cars for?
“I think it’s all a stupid obsession. Why do we have so many watches?” said Yachty while flashing the ice hugging his wrist.
Despite his spending exuberance, Yachty offered some shrewd financial tips to his fans:
“Save your money, because I don’t care about any of this. I got thousands of tennis shoes, eventually they’ll go bad (and be worth nothing).”