He May Not Be Rapping Real Words But Young Thug Is Changing the Hip-Hop Game

Image: Instagram

Last weekend, wasted in a car with friends, I played Young Thug’s Barter 6 mixtape. There was a distinct moment of clarity halfway through the track “With That” when I realized how dislocating the auto-tuned melodies were. It made us think about why we engaged so passionately with something we quite literally didn’t understand.

We had no idea what the fuck Young Thug was saying.

If we look at the aesthetics of rap music evolving from the height of lyricism in the 90s, with rappers like Nas, Tribe, Rakim, it’s only natural that the form shifts beyond the spoken meaning of words as text, to its vocal essence, tone and sound (à la the auto-tune finale of Kanye West’s "Runaway" ). If we have seen this natural transformation in painting and poetry, why are we so surprised when it happens in rap music?

Young Thug spits lyrics like “I'ma run up them bands, I'll take care their funds, bitch, I got a moms bitch, she got a moms, bitch” and "I'm so fresh like this detergent, If you not fresh you so through with that, If you are a nerd, everything here you not cool with that." The Atlanta rapper has an uncanny ability to juxtapose mundane observations with metaphor riddled Freudian slips. But the issue here is whether the lyrics are even worth discussing if they are beyond comprehension.

Ironically, Young Thug breaks away from other auto-tune rappers such as Future because of his lyrics; specifically the way in which he is intuitively tuned to prioritize sound over lyrical meaning, and the way in which he reduces rap to a genre post-text. If Lil Wayne took Jay-Z’s impromptu, unconscious flair and abstracted it, Young Thug took the baton and minimized it to the point of intangible, pure expression. The emotional condition is voiced in the long tradition of exploiting the diversity of notes in music, not dissimilar to the style of Indian raga and stuff La Monte Young was experimenting with in the 70s.

Image: Instragram

When Thugger was asked to recite the lyrics for “Best Friend” in an online video for GQ, the awkwardness of his prose and the illustration of his message fell apart. I think they were going for a spoken-word vibe but it came across more like a kid being forced to read a note he was passing to his girlfriend in high school, its embarrassing and to his defence, out of context.

To keep art alive you generally have to open up the dialogue in a new way (something Kanye arguably tried to achieve with Yeezus and his rant about wearing tight jeans in Chicago). Young Thug further breaks down traditions and subverts what it means to be a ‘gangster’ by wearing women’s clothing, declaring in his latest ad campaign for Calvin Klein “there is no such thing as gender.” The problem with being a progressive artist in the mainstream is that it conflicts with old ideals of wanting to preserve rap culture whilst simultaneously challenging what hip-hop means.

Perhaps its because rap as a cultural signifier begins to deconstruct when aesthetics are prioritized. By limiting the hip-hop genre to these dated constructs we are only further confining the potential of rap as a voice for African American culture, allowing it to primarily exist within motifs of gang violence, drug dealing and misogyny, because they are more ‘street’ or ‘real.’

Transgressing this stylistically, paves the way for rap music to be respected as a genre not an identity; Young Thugs style diverts the lyrical associations to its essence, the experience of his oeuvre. Suddenly hip-hop is free from the shackles of negative stereotypes whilst maintaining the tonal struggle deeply embedded in its rich cultural roots. I imagine influential art critic and essayist Clement Greenberg giving him an A+, and Thugger telling him he doesn’t need it, cos’ he on fleek.

Young Thug's 'Jeffrey' mixtape is available soon.

Follow Mahmood on Twitter