Young Thug Being Young Thug [COMPLEX]

Started by SHUDEYE, Oct 14, 2021, in Young Thug Add to Reading List

  1. SHUDEYE
    Posts: 16,626
    Likes: 30,022
    Joined: Mar 16, 2015
    Location: Melbourne, Australia

    SHUDEYE Kerser is the sickest.

    Oct 14, 2021
    Inside the wildly unpredictable life of rap’s most eccentric superstar

    I’m supposed to meet Young Thug in 15 minutes, but I just found out I’m wearing the wrong clothes.


    The Atlanta rapper has been holed up in a large house for the past week, finishing his next album Punk, and there’s a strict dress code: everyone who enters must be wearing all white.

    No one can give a clear answer why he wants us all to dress in white, but the last thing I want to do is disrupt his creative process, so I scramble to find a white hoodie and a new pair of pants.

    When I show up to the house, I notice the windows are covered in ice and there’s snow on the ground outside. It’s a 70-degree September day, and it hasn’t snowed in Atlanta for at least nine months, so I touch the ground to make sure I’m not hallucinating. Nope. It’s snow. I’d been warned my day with the eccentric rapper wouldn’t be a normal one, but I can’t say I was prepared for the f---ing seasons to change.

    I step inside. There’s a makeshift recording studio set up in the living room, surrounded by large white curtains. A giant TV is playing slow-motion footage of icy glaciers on one wall and a painting of Billie Eilish is hung on another. In the middle of it all, a man wearing a fuzzy white sweater is recording vocals. I can’t see his face, but I immediately recognize his voice. It’s Nate Ruess, lead singer of the pop rock band Fun.

    As he works on the song, a dozen musicians (dressed in all white, of course) are killing time in the kitchen, and I overhear one of them talk about how Thug brought in artificial snow specifically for these sessions, just to make sure the vibe was right.


    An hour passes before Thug finally shows up, wearing white Dickies jeans with alien heads printed all over them, a white T-shirt with an image of a smaller white T-shirt on it, and a pair of white split-toe loafers. The man refuses to be outdressed, even when he’s following the same dress code as everyone else.


    Thug takes a seat on a barstool next to Ruess, producer Jeff Bhasker, and longtime collaborator Metro Boomin, and starts talking about how he wants to become the first rapper to record a song in outer space. He’s joking at first, laughing hysterically as he pictures himself floating around in zero gravity.


    Then someone tells him about the space tourism industry, pointing out that SpaceX is going to start sending private citizens into orbit. Thug’s eyes light up, and he tries convincing Ruess to train with him, asking a bunch of questions about how much money it would cost to pull something like this off.


    He gets quiet, stares into the distance, and ponders what it would really be like to be in space. He sounds concerned.

    “It’s so quiet. Black. Nothing! Scary. What the f---?!”

    Ruess chimes in. “Not only that, but you’re eating pudding out of your helmet. I’m out!”

    Everyone laughs, but Thug is still deep in thought. He keeps talking about how there’s “nothing” up there, muttering, “Everything’s all black...” He ends up deciding that if he actually did go to space someday, he would want “to go to something.” He would need a destination. Maybe the moon.

    This is what Young Thug’s life is like at the age of 30. Any idea that pops into his head, no matter how unrealistic it might seem to the average person, feels attainable to him. When he wakes up on a summer day and wants it to snow, he finds a way to make it happen. When he wants to collaborate with one of his favorite singers, he fires off a DM and they show up (even Elton John). When he wants everyone around him to change into new clothes, they do it.

    He tells me he’s been manifesting his current lifestyle for years, and everything has been falling into place lately. His last two projects, 2019’s So Much Fun and 2021’s YSL compilation Slime Language 2, each debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, and he just had the No. 1 song in the country alongside Drake and Future on “Way 2 Sexy.”

    More: https://stories.complex.com/young-thug-punk-interview-2021/2/
     
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    DKC, Ordinary Joel, LasiK and 2 others like this.
    Mar 28, 2024
  2. SHUDEYE
    Posts: 16,626
    Likes: 30,022
    Joined: Mar 16, 2015
    Location: Melbourne, Australia

    SHUDEYE Kerser is the sickest.

    Oct 14, 2021
     
    Mar 28, 2024
  3. AvB
    Posts: 2,650
    Likes: 3,123
    Joined: Feb 15, 2011

    AvB

    Oct 14, 2021
    classic incoming
     
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    DKC, Ordinary Joel and LasiK like this.
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    DKC, Ordinary Joel and LasiK like this.
    Mar 28, 2024