How Plaqueboymax Became Your Favorite Rapper's Favorite Streamer
Thanks to some novel streaming ideas he’s had with artists, Plaqueboymax is rising to the top of the streamer power rankings. Here’s how he’s getting there.
In a world saturated by streamers, Plaqueboymax is carving a lane of his own. Since joining the FaZe Clan last April, Max, who's 21, has parlayed an engaging persona, a fruitful platform, and, yes, some solid musical skills to level up in a major way.
This is mostly due to the success of his In the Booth series.
Part hangout sesh, part recording session, entries into his In The Booth series have collected millions of views in a fairly short time. Streamers like Kai Cenat and Adin Ross have been inviting rappers on their streams for years, but Plaqueboymax is one of the first to actually make music with his guests live on Twitch. On In The Booth, Max—who also raps, produces, and engineers—records a song live on Twitch, giving viewers an inmate look into the recording process. (Viewers can also provide live feedback to what they’re hearing.)
In the span of a couple of months, he’s engineered for artists like 41, Lazer Dim 700, Ian, DDG and more. Sometimes, he even jumps on the track, and some of them have already collected millions of streams.
While Plaqueboymax had already gotten a sizable following through years of being online, it feels like he’s on the verge of a new pinnacle, and soon, a lot more people will know exactly who he is.
For those who don’t, here’s the lowdown. Here’s everything you need to know about Plaqueboymax.
Where did Plaqueboymax come from?
Hailing from West Orange, New Jersey, Plaqueboymax has spent nearly his entire life making and releasing content. He first began as a pre-teen with an account called MaxGotNext, which saw him upload clips of himself hooping with his friends. He and some friends later formed a YouTube content group called Basement Boyz. In those years, he and the team would conduct everything from random public interviews to spontaneous freestyle sessions.
But Max was always the creative engine behind the collective. And after earning over 190k YouTube subscribers, and eventually getting his first YouTube plaque, it was clear that Max wanted to be a personality—that he wanted to go from being “Max the Editor” to Max the streamer. And that, of course, led to other things….
What does he do?
After leaving the aforementioned Basement Boyz, Plaqueboy Max launched his own channel while also joining Twitch in April 2021 (telling his parents he wanted to take a gap year before college.) He gradually moved from once-or-twice-a-week streams to doing daily streams.
As his popularity grew, one of Max’s strengths was involving and platforming his followers, known as the 5$STAR community, into his streams, creating a family environment that involves everything from trading stories to speed dating. Things went into turbo mode in early 2024 when he was one of the new recruits for the esports brand FaZe Clan, boosting his popularity partially due to the success of their Subathon last September.
The rise of In the Booth
Max gained more popularity for two particular series, In the Booth and Song Wars. For In the Booth, he invites artists to his crib to make music, streaming the whole affair so fans can see acts like Dave Blunts and DDG cook up raw and unfiltered. Plaqueboy’s role can change depending on the episode. Sometimes, he serves as the engineer and the producer. For others, he even steps into the booth himself to get some flows off. Through it all, he maintains an energetic atmosphere—but he makes sure to lock in to offer the same sort of feedback you’d expect from any young and engaged engineer/producer.
Plaqueboymax also has Song Wars, wherein he would lock in with artists who play unreleased songs for judges (other artists) who award it a score out of a 10-point scale. Whoever gets the most points at the end wins. It’s sort of like a fusion between Verzuz and a rapper study hall.
So in essence, Plaqueboymax is at the center of a new frontier of artist-fan interaction. Whether he’s making bangers or helping artists get feedback for them, he’s using Twitch to make moments fans feel like they can be a part of. More symbolically—and even, functionally—he’s creating micro archives for musical experimentation. Both shows continue the tradition of artists playing song snippets on Instagram Live, except in this case, fans get to see the whole songs come together, and artists get to collapse the distance between a legit studio experience and an opportunity to introduce themselves to even bigger audiences. It’s a one-stop shop for promo and musical creation.
Who has he worked with?
Max has become a legitimate tastemaker. Thus far, Plaqueboymax has worked with artists from across the spectrum, with everyone from SoundCloud rap legends like Trippie Redd to ascendent drill group 41 checking in.
Within the last couple months or so, he’s also connected with Fivio Foreign, Nino Paid, BabyChiefDoIt, Bay Swag and Cash Cobain (“No More” really goes). He’s worked with Ian, too.
He would have worked with Lil Tjay, but…well it’s complicated. Fivio Foreign brought Lil Tjay into an In the Booth. But things became tense when Tjay and Fivio refused to stop smoking weed during filming, so they left. (They were in an Airbnb and Plaqueboymax didn’t want to set off a fire alarm.)
Speaking to DDG about the incident later, Tjay explained being confused by the Plaqueboymax situation, because he, “didn’t know him until that day.”
What are the most successful Plaqueboymax songs?
Lazer Dim 700's “Laced Max”, which was the first song Max recorded live with a major artist, is still his biggest hit. The song has more than 33 million streams on Spotify and more than 6 million on YouTube. His DDG collab “Pink Dreads” is also picking up steam. Released near the end of December, “Pink Dreads” has collected over 3.8 million Spotify streams to date. So yeah. It’s going up. And it’s honestly not hard to see why. Both DDG and Plaqueboymax, who raps on the track, serve up a perfectly lethargic verse that seeps into the chords of the opiate beat like a narcotic mist.
“Cooln” from Nino Paid and BabyChiefDoit is also a standout. It’s collab from two up-and-coming street rappers with distinctive styles, that’s earned over 1.7 million Spotify streams. Plaqueboymax doesn’t serve up vocals on it, but he put the two together, solidifying his status as a rap trendsetter.
So, how popular is Plaqueboymax?
Plaqueboymax has over 1.1 million YouTube subscribers and recently surpassed 1 million monthly listeners on Spotify. He’s also got 1.4 million subscribers on Twitch—making him the 22nd most popular streamer on the platform. He has 476k followers on Instagram and over 200k on X. So, people are definitely watching.
Even more importantly, though, he’s cool and popular enough to get artists on his shows regularly—and show up on cool shows like, ahem, Complex’s GOAT Talk.
And finally…when does Drake start tapping in?
Well, Drake’s already tapped in. During a livestream with Adin Ross, Drake mentioned that he was checking out Max, saying “I was watching Plaqueboymax. I was watching him in a live studio session or some shit and I was like, ‘Yo, Adin would troll me so hard for watching this.’ I watched it for an hour.”
Later on, Max talked about being feeling slighted in the backhanded manner Drake mentioned him. But it seems like things are mended. Drake followed up Max on social media and the two have talked privately.
