Half of the hottest duo in rap went to prison
just as they blew up, but that’s in the past
The Mix
SPOTLIGHT
City Girls Are
Finally Free
A
LL THROUGH 2019,
Jatavia “JT” John-
son tracked the
rise of her duo, City Girls,
by watching the size of
the jewelry worn by her
musical partner, Caresha
“Yung Miami” Brownlee,
in their frequent video
calls. “Things were get-
ting bigger,” JT says with
a giggle. She spent most
of last year in a Florida
prison, serving out a sen-
tence for credit-card fraud
that began the day after
City Girls’ feature spot on
Drake’s smash “In My Feel-
ings” introduced them to
the world, in 2018. Hear-
ing from Yung Miami, who
handled all of the duo’s
performances and promo-
tional work on her own
during JT’s time behind
bars, was a lifeline.
JT has been living in
an Atlanta halfway house
since October, and her
sentence officially ends
this month. After that,
the duo — who are signed
to Quality Control, the
same label that launched
Migos and Lil Baby — will
get back to work on their
second album of catchy,
sisterly trap music. (Their
first, 2018’s Girl Code, was
recorded in a hurry before
JT’s jail term began.) “It’s
still women empower-
ment,” Yung Miami says of
their new music’s themes.
“City Girls don’t take no
ish from a man.”
With Yung Miami raising
two children in the city
she’s named after, and JT
unable to leave Atlanta for
now, they’re still spending
more time apart than they
would like. “It’s not going
to be right until I get off
this shit,” JT says. Still,
Yung Miami says she is
already feeling much more
confident with her best
friend by her side whenev-
er she visits Atlanta: “It’s
what was missing.”
BRITTANY SPANOSJT (left) and Yung
Miami in Atlanta
in January
30 | PHOTOGRAPH BY Diwang Valdez