$TUPID YOUNG

$tupid Young's story starts before he was born, in the exodus that built Cambodia Town: his family fled to Long Beach to escape the Khmer Rouge genocide, part of the wave that made the city home to one of the largest Cambodian communities in America. Born Alex Pham (half Cambodian, half Vietnamese) he was raised largely by his grandparents, who ran a gambling house out of their home while his father was in prison. He fell in love with hip-hop through BET and MTV, memorizing Snoop Dogg, Daz and Kurupt: Long Beach legends from the other side of the same city.

His father, a member of the Asian Boyz, told him not to follow. He joined his father's set anyway, under the name Young Shadow. At sixteen, locked up on a gun charge (his fifth time in the system) he found the other inheritance: a rap program in juvenile detention called F.L.O.W. (Fluent Love of Words), and on a later nine-month stretch he took a flow class inside and was released early for pursuing music as a career. The stage name is his mother's doubt worn as armor: "She'd be like, 'Man, you stupid, you ain't ever gonna be a rapper.'" He kept the Young, took the insult, and made it a brand.

The breakthrough was "Mando" with Mozzy (the title a contraction of "mandatory," produced by paupa) which hit a million YouTube views in its first month with no marketing behind it and kept climbing past seventeen million by 2018. In November 2021 the RIAA certified it Gold under Afficials / EMPIRE, and he announced it as the first plaque by a Cambodian artist in the US. The catalog around it tells the rest: "Trust Nobody," "Murder Scene" with Lil Durk, "Suppose To" with Blueface, "Wit A Sticc" with Tee Grizzley, and the 2020 album "From Here on Out" carrying features from Snoop Dogg, E-40, Blueface and NoCap: a Cambodia Town artist trading verses with the West Coast canon he grew up memorizing.

VICE featured him in its Minority Reports documentary series; Stereogum wrote that he carries "a street-rap perspective that I've never heard anyone else bring." The work since runs through the 2025 album "UNTIL THE ALBUM," a continuing run with Mozzy, and "Better Dayz" with Polo G, sing-songy Long Beach melody over the pain and pride of Cambodia Town, from one of the most visible Asian American voices in West Coast rap.