Anlihliehlie abegen en this theounbagennen.
The mash of vowels and consonants above is my interpretation of a melody in the song “Lifestyle” featuring Rich Homie Quan and Young Thug.
Listening to “Lifestyle” in a booster seat on the way to elementary school was my introduction to Young Thug. His slurred careening verse is practically unintelligible on first listen. On paper, the scramble of letters reads like complete nonsense, but on the track, Thug masterfully ties these strings of senseless sounds together to create melodies so fascinating that his voice essentially becomes an instrument. He pioneered the weirdest ever-shifting flow that cycles unpredictability through singing, rapping, mumbling, grunting, wailing, squawking and caterwauling; pushing hip-hop forward through his own uncanniness. But the weirdest thing about it all is that it works.
“Halftime” is one of my favorite songs by Thug. He seamlessly snaps into countless different flows, stretching and contorting his voice from rapid-fire delivery to drawn-out syllables. The extension of the second syllable of “re-cy-les” takes the track off-beat for a split second then catapults us into a fast-spitting yet clear and precise verse. He then ingeniously takes us back out of the heat to marinate in a spacey and eerie chorus where he melodically cries “Hey-ooh, let’s have a very good time,” before we are shot out of a cannon into a legendary twenty-eight-second verse. The simple yet hypnotic beat cycles back with heavy bass and it becomes a semi-reckless balancing act for Thug. He goes back and forth between firing fully automatic bars to his warped melodic stretches and everywhere in between.
Young Thug’s voice is his defining quality. A shape-shifting chameleon-like instrument that can cycle through every pitch and tone but still be truly unmistakable. The sounds Thug makes are certainly unique, but his true talent lies in what he can do with those sounds. He has the ability to make people feel. This ability is so tremendous that lyrics become irrelevant. Thug isn’t making music you have to deeply analyze in terms of meaning. He wants to make people feel when they listen. He wants to generate a feeling in your head. That feeling is the meaning. Whether the lyrics are actually comprehensible or not, Young Thug expresses and kindles raw emotion through his music, a skill that any artist, musically or not, dreams to have.
In the delirious and maniacal track “Digits,” you are lent a piece of Young Thug’s mind for just under three minutes. It’s a nihilistic shrug concurrently serving as an anthem to the genre of trap. “Why not risk life when it’s gon’ keep going? When you die somebody else was born,” Thug asserts, wrapping the YOLO philosophy in a ‘get money’ mentality. The track then proceeds to move at warp speed, driven by a sharp, persistent snare paired with raucous and raw rapid-fire verses from Thug. It sounds like adrenaline. It sounds like violence. It sounds urgent. Then he switches his cadence, as he does, and settles into a strut, “I’ve been gettin’ money before the music,” and “I just do this * when I get bored,” he says casually.
Young Thug makes sense, just don’t listen too hard.
“I look good as your dad on a Friday.” –Young Thug
