Punk, Tom

When Young Thug a.k.a. Jeffery Lamar Williams II first released music at the start of the 2010s, he began planting the seeds of what the terminally online would term "mumble rap." To him, hard bars weren't necessary when there were so many ways to croak, whisper, mutter, mumble, shriek, and croon. After a run that culminated in 2016's Jeffrey, his work became much less cutting edge and, in an odd way, much more commercially successful. By that point, Atlanta was the mainstream. Migos, Playboi Carti, Future, Metro Boomin, Pi'erre Bourne—all of them were breaking into the charts, and the Thugger was no exception. But his rapping gave way to singing by the time of Beautiful Thugger Girls, and in the aftermath, he seemed to start eating from the mainstream instead of feeding into it.

Which brings us to Punk, though in his eyes it's probably synonymous with "emo." Sound-wise, it's the kind of emo-trap that Lil Uzi Vert and Lil Peep perfected about four years before he even touched the stuff, but Young Thug has so much actual dark shit to get off his chest and raw charisma behind the mic that he makes you want to lean in and listen anyway. Highlights for me are "Stupid/Asking," "Living It Up," and "Day Before," because I'm not going to pretend I don't love huge hooks and a bit of toxicity on record. The problem seems to be that there's just too much filler—20 songs in 62 minutes? Give me a break.

Around the time of Drake's Views, hip-hoppers learned that the more songs were on an album on a streaming service, the more streams it would get, and the longer it would stay on the charts. So all semblance of pacing and treasuring the twelve-songs-in-40-minutes format was out the window as music more and more simply became "content." There's a million examples of these, but it seems like Young Thug couldn't escape his version of bloat either. 

All in all, there's much more vibe than substance in this whole project. I like Thug as a performer and lyricist, though his personal life is much more violent and criminal. But I don't think this is a project to stick with me, not like his hits "Lifestyle" or "Pickup the Phone" do.

3.0/5 Pukes