Jo-Vaughn Virginie Scott was born on January 20, 1995, and was the first of his immediate Caribbean family to be born in the United States. His family originated from the island of St. Lucia in the Caribbean on his mother's side. He is Jamaican on his father's side. He was born in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York City, New York. He was raised in Bed-Stuy and attended the Edward R. Murrow High School. He originally enrolled at Edward R. Murrow to study acting, but transitioned towards music around the time of 9th grade, with a focus on rapping.

In October 2010, Joey Badass uploaded a video of himself freestyling to YouTube. The video was re-posted on to American hip hop site World Star Hip Hop and caught the attention of Jonny Shipes, the President of Cinematic Music Group, who soon after became his manager.

On November 9, 2012, Joey Badass released a track with Ab-Soul produced by Lee Bannon called "Enter the Void" along with "Waves". These songs were his first official releases to Retail. On January 14, 2013, he released the first single off his second mixtape Summer Knights, "Unorthodox", which was produced by DJ Premier. On February 8, he released a music video featuring Big K.R.I.T. and Smoke DZA titled "Underground Airplay". The song was featured on the Eckō Unltd. mixtape. On March 5, 2013, he released the music video for "Unorthodox". On March 21, 2013, he began the Beast Coast concert tour with Pro Era, The Underachievers and Flatbush Zombies. On March 26, 2013, it was announced that Joey Badass would be a part of XXL Magazine's 2013 Freshman Class.

On October 29, 2013, Summer Knights EP was released. It featured four songs from the mixtape of the same name, and three new songs including a remix. Upon release, the EP debuted at number 48 on the US Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.

On August 4, 2014, he released the first single from his upcoming debut studio album titled "Big Dusty" with the music video coming out 8 days later. On September 30, he premiered the second single from the album titled "Christ Conscious" on MTV Jams. The third single from the album entitled "No. 99" was released on December 9. On December 23, the fourth single, "Curry Chicken" was released. On January 13 appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, he performed the song "Like Me" live with BJ the Chicago Kid, The Roots and Statik Selektah. On January 20, 2015, his 20th birthday, the album entitled B4.DA.$$ was released to critical acclaim.

On July 7, 2015, in an interview with Ebro Darden on Hot 97, Joey Badass had words of praise for Troy Ave, stating: "At some point you gotta have some level of respect for Troy because, at the end of the day, we're both independent artists who are standing on major platforms next to a whole bunch of major artists and they know who we are." However, in February 2016, he reignited the feud in a single entitled "Ready", where he rapped: "60k, first week for the badass / 200k to this day, I know you niggas mad / With that 80-20 split, my nigga do the math / my nigga Kirk just outsold Troy Ave" (in reference to Kirk Knight's debut studio album Late Knight Special and Troy Ave's second studio album Major Without a Deal).

In a freestyle on Sway in the Morning on March 29, 2016, Joey Badass responded to "Badass" in a series of lines aimed at Troy Ave, though never referring to him directly. Among other lines, he rapped: "I destroy average Rappers, it's just practice […] Men lie, women lie, numbers sure don't / Got the whole beast coast coming for your skull / The karma gon' catch up, your album sales won't". In an interview with HipHopDX the following day, Fat Joe stated that he personally reached out to both Joey Badass and Troy Ave to try and squash the feud, but failed.

On December 28, 2017, Joey Badass announced via Twitter that he was originally featured on Post Malone's track "Rockstar" along with T-Pain. Badass also admitted to ghostwriting the track. Florida Rapper Xxxtentacion announced on Instagram that he had a collaboration project with Joey Badass, Badass later confirmed this on January 20, 2018. The two dropped a remix of the song "King's Dead" on SoundCloud on March 9, 2018. The two later on dropped a song titled "Infinity (888)" on XXXTentacion's second studio album ? one week later on March 16.