Sergey Diakov
Not many people go from flipping burgers at McDonald's to being listed by Forbes as a top-20 hip-hop earner in just two years. But that's basically what happened with Lil Yachty. His story is one of those rare ones where the hustle really did come before the hype, and the money followed because he was already doing the work long before anyone was paying attention.
Lil Yachty's First Jobs and the Early Grind Nobody Talks About
Miles Parks McCollum was born on August 23, 1997, in Mableton, Georgia, and grew up in Atlanta in a pretty ordinary household. His dad was a photographer, his mom worked a corporate job, and Miles was just a kid obsessed with music - especially Drake, who he'd listen to on repeat for hours. There was nothing that obviously pointed to a rap career. Nothing except the fact that he genuinely could not let it go.
As a teenager, he worked part-time at McDonald's while attending Pebblebrook High School. It was a real job with real shifts, and his mom at one point asked him to cut off his signature dyed braids so he'd make a better impression on the manager. He kept the braids. In 2015, he enrolled at Alabama State University, lasted about two months, then dropped out and moved to New York City with basically nothing - no plan, no money, no fallback. He was crashing with a friend, still doing minimum wage work to get by, and spending every spare moment building his Instagram following and uploading music to SoundCloud. Nobody was listening yet, but he kept going anyway.
The Viral Moment That Launched Lil Yachty's Career Overnight
The break came in the most 2010s way possible. His track "One Night" ended up in a viral video, and suddenly people wanted to know who made it. That one random moment of internet exposure kicked everything into motion. In 2016, he dropped his debut mixtape Lil Boat, which included both "One Night" and "Minnesota." Then he jumped on DRAM's track "Broccoli," which hit No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and picked up a Grammy nomination. That same year, he walked as a model in Kanye West's Yeezy show at Madison Square Garden. In twelve months, he went from anonymous SoundCloud artist to someone people were actually talking about in the industry.
The financial side moved just as fast. Quality Control Music co-founder Pierre Thomas went on record saying Lil Yachty made $13 million in 16 months, with most of it coming from live shows, features, and brand deals. Years later, Yachty himself addressed the internet's lowball estimates in pretty direct terms.
Lil Yachty Net Worth at His Peak: $11 Million on the Forbes List in 2017
By 2017, Yachty was not just a viral moment. He was a working industry star with a full calendar and serious money coming in. Forbes ranked him as the 20th highest-earning hip-hop artist that year, with $11 million in total earnings. He performed at over 100 live events, became creative director at Nautica, and signed endorsement deals with Sprite and Target. His debut studio album Teenage Emotions came out that year and debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard Top 200. The kid who was asking his manager for shifts two years earlier was now being named creative director of a fashion brand.
2018 kept the momentum going. His second studio album Lil Boat 2 debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard Top 200 and moved 64,000 units in its first week. He joined esports organization FaZe Clan and kept stacking brand partnerships - Adidas and Urban Outfitters joined the list alongside his earlier deals. What made this period significant was not just the volume of income but the variety. He was no longer dependent on any single revenue source.
What Is Lil Yachty Net Worth in 2025?
As of 2025, most estimates on lil yachty net worth cluster around $20-25 million, with several outlets landing specifically at $25 million. The $8 million figure that circulated earlier was something Yachty openly pushed back on, and looking at the full picture of his business activity, it is easy to see why he felt it was off. A lot of what he earns does not show up neatly in album sales data.
His income today runs through a bunch of different channels at once. He has over 17.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify, which means steady streaming royalties even between releases. His record label and creative collective Concrete Boys gives him a stake in other artists' careers. He owns a luxury property in Atlanta worth over $3 million. His car collection includes a Ferrari F8 Tributo valued at around $300,000, a Rolls-Royce Cullinan, and vehicles from Lamborghini and Bentley. He has appeared in multiple seasons of ABC's Grown-ish and has upcoming film and TV projects in the pipeline. His 2023 psychedelic rock album Let's Start Here and the 2024 collaboration Bad Cameo with James Blake showed he is still creatively relevant, and in the long run, that is what keeps the money coming.
Lil Yachty's Ideas on How to Build Something That Actually Lasts
Yachty has never sat down to write a guide on success, but the decisions he has made over the past decade tell a pretty clear story. The first thing he understood early was that visibility comes before money, not after. Moving to New York with no safety net and pouring energy into growing his social media presence was not naive - it was the correct move for the era he was in. Attention is the asset, and everything else follows from it.
The second thing he got right was treating brand partnerships as more than paychecks. His work with Nautica, Yeezy, and Sprite was not just income. It was proof that people outside of hip-hop took him seriously, which made the next deal easier to close and the one after that easier still. He used credibility as leverage before most people his age understood that was even something you could do.
Third, he diversified before he had to. A lot of artists wait until the hype fades to start thinking about what else they can build. Yachty was already running a record label, getting into esports, launching merchandise, and taking acting work while he was still riding the peak of his initial buzz. By the time any one stream slowed down, he had five others running alongside it. And finally, he kept reinventing himself artistically. Releasing a psychedelic rock album when everyone expected another rap project was a risk that could have flopped badly. Instead, it earned him a new audience and reminded the industry he cannot be easily put in a box. In his own words, the internet does not always tell the full story. The real work, the real wealth - a lot of it happens out of frame.
Sergey Diakov
