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Kevin Jerome Gilyard (born February 5, 1986), better known by his stage name Kevin Gates, is an American rapper, singer, and entrepreneur. He is currently signed to Bread Winners' Association with a partnership with Atlantic Records. His debut studio album, Islah, released in January 2016 and peaked at number two on the US Billboard 200 chart. Prior to Islah, Gates also released a number of mixtapes including Stranger Than Fiction, By Any Means, and Luca Brasi 2, all of which peaked in the top 40 on the Billboard 200 chart.

Early life
Kevin Gates was born Kevin Jerome Gilyard on February 5, 1986 to a Puerto Rican mother and an African American father. He and his family relocated to Baton Rouge soon after his birth. Gates had an often tumultuous upbringing and was arrested for the first time in 1999 at the age of 13 for "joyriding" as a passenger. He lost contact with his father at a young age, but later reconnected with him as a teenager. His father died of complications from AIDs when Gates was 14 years old. When he was 17, he briefly attended Baton Rouge Community College. Gates is of Moroccan and Puerto Rican descent.

Personal life
Gates married his longtime girlfriend, Dreka Haynes, in October 2015. The couple have two children, Islah and Khaza. Gates hinted that he had children by other women in a 2013 interview with Complex: "I got some children. I'm real real close with them. I lay in the bed with them, hold them, love on them. It really doesn't make sense to say [how many kids I have]. Not in a bad way, but it's not like the public will ever get to see my children, and if they do see them, they aren't going to know they're mine."

Gates is a practicing along with his wife, and went in September 2016 to Mecca for.

Legal issues
Gates' first arrest occurred when he was 13 for being a passenger in a stolen vehicle. Gates was briefly jailed for the offence, and said that being jailed had a profound effect on his life: "If they would've just pulled up to the jail, left me in the police car, never took me inside and just took me back home, I don't think I'd ever have done anything else again. But what it did was—by me going into jail at such a young age—all it did was criminalize me in a sense. It kinda steered me in the wrong direction after getting there and settling in; it took the fear of jail away from me."

In 2003, Gates was involved in an altercation outside a movie theatre and stabbed his opponent multiple times.

Gates was charged with battery for kicking a fan in the summer of 2015 while he was performing on stage at an event in Lakeland,. He used Florida's stand-your-ground law in defense. On October 26, 2016, he was convicted of the charge and sentenced to 180 days in jail. In 2017, Gates was sentenced to a 30-month prison term for gun charges stemming from a 2013 incident, but was released on parole on January 10, 2018.

Discography

 * Islah (2016)
 * I'm Him (2019)