Young Thug is the wailing, trilling, spitting musician of the moment. While The Weeknd emerged after years underground, a fully formed entity with perfectly crafted, Max Martin–produced R&B songs, the 24-year-old Young Thug is quite publically in the process of becoming. Thugger, as he’s known, performed last Thursday at SummerStage in Central Park, sporting platinum dreads, a septum ring, and half a dozen fur balls (anti-Fendi Monsters, if you will) dangling from the belt loops of his low-slung jeans. By the time he rolls into winter, he may have concocted an entirely new look.
Né Jeffrey Lamar Williams, Young Thug’s name implies something indefinite. It’s not a moniker with the eccentricity of Gucci Mane, for instance, who signed him to his label, 1017 Brick Squad, or the specificity of Lil Wayne, whom he was once alleged of plotting to murder. Young Thug is not really a name so much as a vague description. To that point, earlier this summer, The New York Times’s ArtsBeat reported that “The Rapper Young Thug Is Arrested in Georgia” after the musician verbally threatened a mall security guard; the exclusion of the first two words of that headline would have yielded a different reading entirely. “Young Thug” is an epithet that allows for a changing identity. Asked where he is from, the Atlanta native recently replied, “Anywhere.”
Young Thug’s latest mixtape, Slime Season, includes a track called “Take Kare” that features Lil Wayne. And yet the world still awaits Hy!£UN35 (translation: Hi!Tunes), Young Thug’s debut album, now months past due. In the meantime, we will all have the pleasure of watching Young Thug evolve into a full-grown artist.
Watch Young Thug and a posse of catwalk superstars party in the best of NYFW:
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