One YBC member’s path from North Philly rapper to shooter was accelerated by a brain injury and dropping out of school

Semaj Nolan dropped out of school in 10th grade because being there made it too easy for his enemies to know where he would be at certain times of the day.

At dismissal hour at Simon Gratz High, he said, “You can get seen by anybody.”

So at 16, after years of spotty attendance that began in middle school, Nolan stopped going. By the next year, he was wanted for two homicides, and now, at 20, he’s in prison, serving 35 years to life.

Nolan, in several interviews, spoke with The Inquirer about his childhood; his journey to becoming a rapper; and how it led him to be affiliated with the Young Bag Chasers, a West Philly gang that has built a following for writing songs about killings. Nolan, wearing a ski mask and flashing guns, was often at the center of YBC’s music videos, rapping about his victims and taunting his enemies.

Nolan’s troubles began long before he joined forces with YBC. The early part of his life was defined by poverty, death, and, later, a traumatic brain injury that his attorney said may have contributed to his decision to kill two teens in one day.

Nolan lived most of his life at 12th Street and Susquehanna Avenue in North Philadelphia, raised by his mother, who gave birth to him when she was 16. His father was shot and killed when he was 1. Nolan’s life overlapped with his father’s by only nine months, the brief window in which he was not in prison before he was killed.

Still, Nolan said, his childhood was relatively good.

“We was just in the hood,” he said.

He and his friends, with little to do in North Philly, would start fights in school, jump kids in the neighborhood, or mob the Gallery with crowds of other teens, he said. He started smoking weed every day when he was 12, and took joyrides in stolen cars soon after.

He became truant in school in the eighth grade, which is around the time he began pursuing a rap career, encouraged by his family. He had been writing songs since he was 8 or 9 years old, he said, and as he grew into a teen, music became a way to express his emotions and creativity. He called himself “Reek12Hunnit.”

(Reek was a nickname his friends gave him, he said, while the number represented his block.)

But rap began to take over his life. At 13, he was staying up all night, smoking weed and making music with teens much older than he, his public defender, Sandra Barrett, said at a sentencing hearing after Nolan’s conviction on two counts of first-degree murder.

“It became basically his whole identity,” she said. “His validation that he received from everyone in his life, encouraging him, cheering him on to get deeper and deeper into that rap music world.”

Then, at 14, Nolan suffered a catastrophic brain injury. He and his friends were fleeing police in a stolen car, and the vehicle crashed. Nolan was ejected through the windshield and thrown into the street. He was in a coma, and when he woke up days later, he couldn‘t remember how old he was. He had fractures to his face and injuries to the temporal and frontal lobes of his brain, which are responsible for a person’s emotions and judgment.

He was hospitalized for a month and suffered from panic attacks. The doctors recommended that he spend time recovering in an inpatient facility, but Nolan didn’t go. Instead, he returned to a lifestyle of smoking, rapping, and using drugs — first weed and later pills, his lawyer told the judge.

Nolan, in an interview, said he couldn’t remember much about the accident or his hospitalization, and didn’t believe the experience had a profound effect on his life.

He pointed instead to the day when he was 15 and saw his friend get shot as a catalyst for how his life took its greatest turn.

They were hanging out in the park with friends, he said, when an argument erupted. One teen pulled out a gun and shot someone in the group. The victim survived, Nolan said, but after the shooting, everything changed, and the friends could no longer trust one another. Worried about his safety, Nolan bought a gun for protection.

The gunfire that day touched off a back-and-forth shooting match between his crew and the others. Then one day, he said, he was shot at twice in one day — first while walking to get a haircut, and then again while getting into a car to go to the music studio.

“That jawn traumatized me,” he said of being trapped in the back of a car, bullets flying in from all directions. He was always armed after that.

His outlook on music and life turned darker. Nolan and his friends called themselves the “Young Face Arrangers,” or YFA — a reference to the way a person’s face is altered after being shot.

And then, he said, he was introduced to the kids from the Young Bag Chasers, and became fully invested in drill — the violent subgenre of rap from Chicago newly making waves in Philly. He started collaborating on songs with them in 2020, and they began to benefit from each other’s followings and shootings — realizing along the way that songs about specific killings and victims garnered more views.

In May 2021, he and two of his friends went out looking to shoot their enemies. First, in West Philly, they shot and killed 18-year-old Nasir Marks, who was just weeks away from graduating high school, in a case of mistaken identity.

Then, 30 minutes later, they gunned down 15-year-old Kanye Pittman on the 2500 block of Sydenham Street in North Philly, targeting him as part of an ongoing feud.

» READ MORE: How an 18-year-old defied the code of silence and helped convict a West Philadelphia gang

The shootings only further propelled Nolan’s music career. He became a rapper on the run, and received a cut of the profits that YBC made from its growing audiences on YouTube, Spotify, and other streaming platforms, he said.

Almost all of his top hits, he said, were recorded while he was on the lam. He could not stay at home, he said, and so for more than a year, he hopped from one Airbnb to another to evade police. A warrant was out for his arrest when he stood inside a hospital and held his newborn daughter for the first time.

He was eventually arrested in July 2022. Prosecutors later used cell phone records, location data, and forensic evidence to convince a jury of his guilt.

Nolan, though, maintains his innocence. He said he didn’t write most of the popular drill songs he sings, even those that seem to refer to his crimes. Many of the lyrics, written by others in the group, are made up, he said.

“A lot of songs, we be saying stuff that never even happened, it’s just to make the song sound right,” he said. “I let people hear what they wanted to hear. It made it seem more real.”

Even after his murder conviction, his friends in YBC, like Abdul Vicks, cared for him from afar, he said — putting money on his books so he could buy things in prison and sending cash to his mother whenever he asked.

“He took care of us,” he said of Vicks, who was shot and killed in August.

Nolan’s prison sentence for murder extends to at least 2057. The earliest he would be eligible for release is when he is 53. By then, his daughter will be over 35. And YBC’s money will be long gone.