Yung Poppy Bio

After school, Yung Poppy moved to San Jose, California, to look for work and to try out new things. At 20, he juggled two jobs, one at the pizzeria Pizza My Heart and another as a package handler at FedEx Express. At the same time, he was finalizing his first mixtape and was also looking for professional acting opportunities. He began posting short funny videos on Vine starting on May 13, 2013 and reached immense popularity by the second half of the next year when most of his videos consistently earned millions of loops. He usually dressed up to play various characters and often featured his friends in his videos. He was able to surpass 2 million followers on the app and became a member of its 1 billion loop club. At the peak of his popularity, he launched his musical career with the song If You Want a Burger..., featuring his alter ego Kiesha Red, through iTunes on August 6, 2014. After Vine was taken down, he was able to transfer his fan base to Instagram, where he has over 1.7 million followers now. He also has a separate Instagram profile for the Kiesha Red character. Interestingly, he joined YouTube in February 2014 and often re-uploaded content from Vine on his channel, which now has 335K subscribers despite being inactive. He was also active on TikTok for a while, but deleted his profile sometime after his arrest.

Yung Poppy was charged with allegedly supplying the drugs that led to a fatal overdose of a 33-year-old woman in Ramona, California on July 9, 2018. Investigators recovered heroin and M30 Oxycodone pills from her home that were believed to be counterfeits containing the deadly drug fentanyl. Further investigations into the woman’s contacts revealed recent text conversation with someone named "Yung", whom she met at her workplace to buy the pills.

The SDPD investigators conducted a sting operation and recovered 144 Oxycodone pills, marijuana, a scale and $8,300 from his Mercedes Benz. He was arrested in July 2018, and in March 2020, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute fentanyl in federal court and admitted to supplying more than 500 grams of fentanyl to the deceased woman. He was subsequently sentenced to 12 years and four months in prison by a federal district court judge. However, the news didn’t reach his fan base until May next year, when his fans flocked to Twitter to express their shock after a viral TikTok video broke the news.

Yung Poppy was born as Michael Steen II on March 25, 1994 in Chula Vista, the second largest city in San Diego, California, United States. He is the middle child of his parents and has an older sister and a younger sister. He attended Chula Vista High School from 2008 to 2011. On his LinkedIn profile, which is no longer maintained, he had described himself as “energetic, fun, social, funny, all around COOL”, professed his love for entertainment and social media, and had expressed his desire to become a mainstream artist someday.

During his Vine days, Yung Poppy often collaborated with fellow Viner Frankie Zia, whom he reportedly also dated. For the longest time, he was in a relationship with a woman named Sancherie Lalloo a.k.a. Chinky, known on Instagram as “Top Chink ♡ Quelly Bick”. He featured her on his Instagram post as far back as 2016 and often shared cozy pictures and videos with her. He also often appeared on her Instagram and Twitter posts and even featured on the video, “BACKWOOD LOVE”, on her YouTube channel on May 5, 2017. The two celebrated their 2nd anniversary in 2018. However, at the time of his sentencing in 2020, he was said to be in a relationship with 23-year-old Racquel Ramcharan, who had also pleaded guilty to possession of drugs laced with fentanyl with intent to distribute.