Young-White was born to Jamaican immigrants and raised in Harvey, Illinois. He later attended Marian Catholic High School where he participated in Speech and Theatre before studying at DePaul University, where he became involved in improv comedy through the collegiate improvisation program 'The Titanic Players.' From DePaul, he ultimately left in his senior year to pursue his comedy career full-time.
Career
Young-White performed stand-upfor the first time at an open mic night when he was 19; he was hired for his first stand-up gig when he was 21. He continued to perform stand-up at several bars and clubs around Chicago and New York City, and was a finalist at the 2016 NYC Devil Cup Stand Up Festival. Beginning in late 2016, several of his memes, tweets, and posts went viral. He subsequently gained prominence on social media, particularly on Twitter and Instagram, where he grew a large following. In 2017, he was featured on Rolling Stone's "25 Under 25: Meet the Young Musicians, Actors, Activists Changing the World" list. The following year, he was included in Vulture's "20 Comedians You Should and Will Know" list. In 2020, Young-White was placed on BET's "Future 40" list, which is a list of "40 of the most inspiring and innovative vanguards who are redefining what it means to be unapologetically young, gifted & black". Since 2017, he has performed stand-up twice on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. As of 2018, he writes for the Netflixtelevision showsBig Mouth and American Vandal. In October of that year, he was hired as a correspondent on The Daily Show; he made his first appearance opposite Trevor Noah on October 11, 2018. In early 2019, Young-White was negotiating to be a lead, alongside Danielle Macdonald in an untitled Bo Burnham and Amy York Rubin film. On Martin Luther King Day, Young-White was temporarily banned from Twitter for posting a tweet posing as the FBI and claiming that they were responsible for the activist's assassination. On March 23, 2020, Twitter again suspended Young-White after he changed his display name and icon to that of the CNN Breaking News account, and tweeting: "BREAKING: Joe Biden is not DEAD. He just getting some dick. We've all been there cnn.com", thus making it appear as though CNN had posted the tweet. His account was restored less than a day later. However, he was subsequently stripped of his verified status.
