”I had to stay busy’: Yung Miami explains how despite having a hit single, she battled through a deep depression
TheGrio...
‘Spend That’ became easily one of the most talked about songs of the summer, peaking at No. 17 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Beyond the discourse about “Spend Dat,” Yung Miami‘s hit single that sparked several think pieces and social media back-and-forths, the former City Girls rapper had reached a breaking point.
Speaking with Angela Yee during a visit to “Way Up With Yee” on August 13, the Miami artist born Caresha Brownlee expressed that she had sunk into a dark depression and the only way to prevent her from having negative thoughts? Working.
“This sh-t always wasn’t what it seems,” she admitted. “With ‘Spend Dat,’ just to see the success of that but knowing what I went through to get there to have this moment? To God, thank you.”
When asked how she handled the social media backlash and the mental hurdles that followed the single’s success, the Miami rapper opted to stay moving at all times, never letting herself dwell on what others were saying.
“I had to keep working. Like that’s literally what I had to do cuz I think that when you have a lot of time to think, you get pulled into that deep depression,” she said. “Whenever I catch myself going into that depression, I’m like, ‘Put me in a studio,’ Cuz I rather go have these emotions in the studio.”
She added, “I’m around people, I’m doing something I love–music. But I ain’t gone lie, there was some days where I was just laying in the bed crying.”
2026 has seen extreme highs and lows for the former City Girls rapper. She drew scrutiny for writing a release letter to a judge in Sean “Diddy” Combs sex crimes trial, defending the disgraced Bad Boy mogul as a good man.
“I think the man that I met, and I experienced, was changed,” she told Charlemagne Tha God in a March interview. “I’m not gonna justify some bullsh-t or support something if I felt like that person wasn’t changed. I felt that the person I met was changed; it was a different experience.”
In reference to what occurred due to her association with Combs, she said, “It was a lot. “I lost deals, I lost relationships, I lost money and … here I am.”
Given the nature of both the highs and lows, Yung Miami says she’s planning to release a documentary chronicling it all, from Diddy to “Spend Dat,” her solo career, the disbandment of City Girls, and more.