Artist Profile: Young Nut on Authenticity and Gaining Fame

Young Nut has taken social media by storm with his charisma, and it doesn’t look like his stride is going to stop anytime soon.

Known best for videos on his YouTube channel and with the YouTube channel Jubilee, Young Nut is now excited to make a career for himself using the fanbase he has created. Since his first debut on Jubilee, Young Nut has ventured off to create videos with other famous YouTubers such as Cody Ko and use other platforms such as TikTok to produce more humorous content.

While the young YouTuber's recent claim to fame was rapid, this triumph only came after years of hard work and dedication to his craft. In an interview with The Harvard Crimson, Young Nut broke down the moments in his comedic career that led to his current position.

Growing up, Young Nut had the full support of his family to follow his dreams, as his father constantly enforced the importance of pursuing his passions. As such, the online personality began his comedic ambitions at the ripe age of fifteen performing stand-up comedy performances in Phoenix, Ariz. at “Standup Live.”

“My thing was like the teenager who said raunchy things,” Young Nut said. “Would it go well now with the same material? Probably not.”

As Young Nut entered college at Arizona State University, he dove deeper into his comedic interests and joined a comedy club at ASU.

“I joined ASU comedy, and now I don’t remember any class that I took, but I remember doing the comedy shows,” Young Nut said.

During his time at college, Young Nut discovered an interest in making music through his college roommate.

“I just kind of transitioned the stand-up stuff into music I guess, because it was more fun, and I could do it with my friends as opposed to just by myself,” Young Nut said. “And then somehow, I don’t remember exactly how, but I started calling myself Young Nut from that.”

As Young Nut began posting his songs on YouTube, one of his songs “I Don’t Eat Ass” skyrocketed in popularity and now has over 500,000 views on YouTube and over 13 million streams on Spotify. The success of this song caused Young Nut to believe that there was a good chance he could make a career out of making songs instead of pursuing his degree in film.

“I had like 300,000 monthly listeners, I signed a distribution deal for some of my songs. I had an active listening base,” Young Nut said. “So that was more of my main focus and that’s why I was like, I just need a degree.”

However, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the up-and-coming artist began to see a fall in his viewership, and his future as a musician no longer looked as bright as it once did. Upon graduating, Young Nut moved to Los Angeles and starred in his first Jubilee video, titled “Which Guy Gets the Most Girls? Girls Rank Guys by Rizz,” that catapulted him into the public’s attention.

“I had like 7,000 Instagram followers at the time,” Young Nut said. “[I thought] I could get 10,000 followers or like 20,000 followers. That would be kind of cool.”

But to Young Nut’s surprise, he gained over 200,000 followers and today boasts 189,000 followers on Instagram and 339,600 on TikTok.

“It was almost overwhelmingly positive, which is shocking,” Young Nut said. “I was expecting more people to be mean to me.”

Since the release of the video, Young Nut has been trying to make the most out of the fanbase he has created without putting any pressure on himself.

“Everyone is telling me to be a YouTuber, I feel like that is very set up for me,” Young Nut said. “Which I am down to do, but I had never planned on that.”

“I’m just hanging out, doing my thing, whatever happens, happens,” Young Nut said. Young Nut has embraced just that, as he recently hosted a live dating show at the University of Washington. Who knows if this is the first of many? No matter what Young Nut chooses to pursue, his future as an online personality is brighter than ever.

Although his online persona highlight the best of his career, Young Nut also took the time to share some of the struggles that he still has, even as a large online personality.

“Social media these days and a lot of other things, it’s a lot of comparison and stuff but I just try to be myself. I try not to change my personality around different people and stuff, it’s still hard to do that for me with adult people,” Young Nut said.

Because of these struggles, Young Nut shared his best advice for his viewers and the readers of The Harvard Crimson.

“You’re not going to be a better version of someone else, the best possible version of you will be the most yourself,” Young Nut said. Being authentic has certainly worked for him, judging by the immense popularity the creator has gained.

Although it took some time for Young Nut’s personality to be discovered by the public, his online presence has just started to sky rocket. No matter what Young Nut chooses to do next, he will certainly remain his authentic self — complete with his captivating charm and charisma.