When Young Thug first blew up, he was unlike anything I had ever heard before. It didn’t immediately register that he would be a superstar. When paired next to Rich Homie Quan, the straight man in their creative exchange, Thug seemed especially peculiar. Dexterous flows, strange squeals, and wily one-liners brought an inimitable animation to music that served as the ideal counterpart to Quan.
Then, “Lifestyle” came out and the pendulum shifted. His sugary (and borderline unintelligible to some) hook helped root himself in rap fans across the country. Gone were a lot of the insults about Young Thug and his rage baiting. His talent far outweighed the antics. He always had a knack for elastic melodies and colorful rapping that spotlighted his potential as a legitimate superstar.
Later, after an abundance of leaks, mixtapes, and album delays, Young Thug would lean fully into his popstar aspirations around the premiere of “With Them” at Kanye’s Life of Pablo listening party and the success of Slime Season 3. His eccentricities would slowly fade in favor of slightly more contemporary rapping. Records like Beautiful Thugger Girls and So Much Fun place Thug in the space of an inescapable rap superstar with countless hits to fill playlists.
The Four Best Young Thug Songs of All Time
With Uy Scuti coming out imminently, his first album since coming out of prison, it’s only right to consider what his best records are. Trying to encapsulate the Young Thug experience in four songs is difficult, particularly if you factor in his dense catalog of leaks. Hard working is an understatement; he essentially lived in the studio to document any weird musical instinct. Then, you have the era where his Moreover, the trajectory of his career requires more than four records to properly lay out the timeline. Consequently, it’s just about narrowing what made Thug such an invigorating artist in the first place, the raw elements.
You’ll immediately find that the best Young Thug records on this list stay within that 2013-2015 space. Frankly, this is the prime, a brief burst of unbridled, unfiltered creativity, far from any notions of prestige and not overly polished. The oddities and the addictive hit-making coexist as one and the same.
“2 B*****s (Danny Glover)”
People were really mean to Young Thug initially. As previously mentioned, his brand of cardigans and tight pants provoked a lot of gay slurs and insults. Typically American to make fun of something without at least trying to parse the meaning first. Still, his occasionally unintelligible rhymes brought a bit of distance between artist and listener.
Thankfully, this didn’t really deter him, especially when breaking out. “2 B*****s” is absolutely electrifying in its experimental, sex-crazed howl. Strung out and aggressively horny, Southside and TM88 make the smart decision to give him a ton of space. Sometimes, less is more and Young Thug thrives in the extra real estate, loud, expressive, and really funny amidst the boasting. The way he coos “Two B*****s” is infectious and silly enough, but to follow that up with comparing his cash flow to eight feet tall or “two midgets,” is absurdist imagery you could only get from Thug. He James Harden Euro-steps on the verses, swapping the malleable for bulldozing.
Any rapper could posit some variety of high fashion flexes and delirious sexscapades. Young Thug magnifies them and separates himself from the pack through off-the-cuff abstraction and wickedly infectious refrains. Thankfully, we’re in an era that can appreciate his delightfully weird inflections and antics. All this proves is that Thug was always one step ahead of his critics, like the best artists are.
“Power”
As wild and abstract of a stylist Young Thug was at one point, his hit-making instincts were always prevalent. Sometimes, the two would find a perfect middle ground like on “Check” or “With That“– the best example of this is later on the list. Down the line, Thug would occasionally make some streaming fodder down the line (*glares in “The London”). But he’s also acutely aware and talented enough to craft a stellar hook to appease some sense of pop rap formality.
“Power” lands this plane, despite coming off a bit jarring on the first Slime Season. David Drake wrote for Pitchfork in 2015 that the record sounds like a Barter 6 leftover, arguing, “where each Barter record made up a discrete facet of the album’s sound, ‘Power’ sounds a little bit like three of them at once.”
However, where Drake calls “Power” “consummate filler,” I’d argue it’s the best example of Young Thug the Superstar. It plays like a bundle of fragmented hooks, hopscotching through London on The Track’s staggering minimal production. His greatest strength is how a catchy refrain occasionally bypasses the formal lyricism outright. Young Thug can pivot between memorable adlibs and hilarious, ridiculous lines like “she sucked like 8 d***s, I call her octagon” or “B***h, I’m rich just like a Simmons, not Lil Diggy (real Simmons).” Sometimes, it’s just fun to mutter the mini melodic run he takes when he croons ‘Big Bentley.’
“Power” definitely paints within the lines for the most part. It doesn’t quite scratch the same itch as some of Thug’s more colorful or flat out bizarre musings. However, “Power” also proves that he’s one of the best rappers working to operate within contemporary structure.
“Just Might Be”
There was this misconception by a lot of hip-hop formalists that Young Thug couldn’t rap. Sure, the way he approached rap didn’t have much precedent. For non southerners, it wasn’t particularly familiar, an alien concept of what the genre and culture could look like. Even for the initiated Atlanta Georgians and Outkast’s occasionally dense tonal concepts, there was still a relative normalcy to it. Most of all, their ears could process their lyrics.
Young Thug never did quite fit the formal mold. He wasn’t entirely incapable of it. It’s a reason why rappers like T.I. quickly and fervently stood behind him, even if his lingo and aesthetic registered foreign to them. But a stylist of his caliber, it might seem intimidating to a less adventurous listener. Where’s the meat and potatoes at?
“Just Might Be” permanently shed these notions that he’s not a ‘real’ rapper. The rapid, breathless pace signals prime Bone Thug-N-Harmony, while he navigates the ominous witchcraft ambiance with a Project Pat level of athleticism in his double-time flow. He’s so all-encompassing on “Just Might Be,” you can’t help but hang onto every single word. When he leaves one of his lines hanging towards the middle of the song, saying “That’s called breathing, that’s how you let that bitch breathe,” it’s disorienting.
Any idea that Young Thug can’t rap seems absurd now. Not overly literate but sharp, clever and imaginative in his simplicity. Dizzying but never inaccessible vocally. At his apex, he is a whirlwind of a rapper, conjuring inimitable flows and unruly tempos even the greats can’t touch.
“Flava”
Rich Homie Quan and Young Thug were musical soulmates. The initial differences in their creative exchange only made them that much more enticing. Quan could oscillate between sweet cooing and brash bravado with ease, unbelievably and effortlessly cool.
Thug approached cool through a different lens entirely though. He was elastic with his phrasing, halving words and stitching them back together to summon similes and metaphors that weren’t there previously. They’re deceptive simple on paper; “Baby all on my Insta, no ‘tution” doesn’t immediately leap off the page but it’s all in how he alters the complexion of a couplet or one-liner to fit a rhyme pattern or a remarkably fluid stream of consciousness. Young Thug raps on “Flava” like he’s speed running a Jenga session, pulling out blocks and reinserting them back into the tower without second guessing.
All of this could theoretically work in a solo context. But at the time, Thug can feel especially indulgent, fatty and rich in his Tasmanian Devil-ish yelps and rubbery raps. Similarly, Quan could’ve made “Flava” bog standard, with a Rich Gang sanctioned Birdman verse to fill out the space. But it’s the interplay that made Tha Tour a classic mixtape in the first place. Not quite cartoonish to forsake credibility, but never too grizzled to forgo color and absurdity. The spiritual descendants of Outkast, Young Thug and Rich Homie Quan had the kind of musical chemistry artists dream of. Thug quickly became a better artist from being in his orbit too.
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