Negrito was born in western Massachusetts, the eighth of fifteen children.[3] His father was a deeply religious Somali Muslim who, Negrito recalls, had "a lot of rules" for his children.[4] Negrito and his family relocated to Oakland when he was 12 years old.[5] A lifelong hustler, he began selling drugs at a young age in Oakland, and in 2016, he told the Guardian, "We were all selling drugs, man. We all carried pistols. There was a crack epidemic."[4] He became inspired to teach himself how to play music after listening to Prince's album Dirty Mind and hearing that Prince was a self-taught musician. He learned to play music by sneaking into music classrooms at the University of California Berkeley despite not being a student there.