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Did NBA Youngboy copy Roddy Ricch's album art? Unimpressed fans call him 'Roddy Poor' as new artwork emerges

NBA Youngboy's soon-to-be-released black and white album cover bears a striking resemblance to Roddy Ricch's 'Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial' album art

Prolific rapper Kentrell DeSean Gaulden aka NBA Youngboy, who also goes by the stage name YoungBoy Never Broke Again, might have just earned a new nickname on social media - "Roddy Poor". This comes after NBA Youngboy took to Twitter on Thursday, August 20, to announce the details of his forthcoming second studio album 'Top', which will be released on September 11. The young star, who has released more than 16 mixtapes in five years, thanks to his prodigious creative output, recently revealed the details of his new 18-track album and also showed fans a preview of the album cover.

However, the excitement over his latest release was eclipsed by the fact that his proposed album art bears a striking similarity to the album cover of another rapper, namely Roddy Ricch. Roddy Ricch's debut album, 'Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial', was released in December 2019, and debuted at No. 1 on the US Billboard 200 chart. However, the album art, which features a black and white photo of the rapper looking straight into the camera, seems to have directly influenced NBA Youngboy's album cover as well. You can check out a side-by-side comparison of the album covers of NBA Youngboy and Roddy Ricch below, in which a fan alludes to the famous Soulja Boy meme, where he accused Drake of copying his flow "word for word and bar for bar".

The similarities are rather undeniable, after closer examination, even if they happened to be coincidental. Both black and white photos show the rappers captured from the waist up in similar poses, wearing expensive chains and black shirts and seemingly glowering at the camera against a white backdrop. This set off a frenzied storm on social media, with fans latching on to the fact that NBA Youngboy had allegedly copied Roddy Ricch's work, and started dissing him on Twitter with a flood of memes, comments and gifs. Fans were quick to point out the similarities, and it seems the parallel ideas between "Youngboy Never Broke Again" and "Roddy Ricch" might have inspired a new nickname, with one unimpressed fan branding NBA Youngboy "Roddy Poor".

One follower also admitted that he thought Roddy Ricch was dropping a deluxe edition of his previous album.

However, plenty of fans were also defending NBA Youngboy, since it's not like black and white portrait covers are anything new in the music industry. Everyone from Elvis Presley to Drake has already released black and white album covers, and a fan pointed out that NBA Youngboy himself was a seminal influence in the rap game currently.

But as one fan noted, "Man copied and don't say Roddy didn't do it first, 'cause the way YB posed was the exact same."

Other fans were insisting the similarities were way too spot-on to merely be a token resemblance.

Roddy Ricch is already a fan of NBA Youngboy's music and is one of his vocal supporters, as one fan pointed out.

Still, it's another ballgame altogether when everyone seems to think someone copied your work and passed it off as their own.

We're willing to give NBA Youngboy a pass on this one, however, because he already is a hit-making machine, not an up-and-coming rapper looking to grab on to the coattails of other stars. It just seems to be a case of great minds think alike!