YOUNG THUG BARTER 6 PHOTOSHOOT FULL
Eventually it’s agreed that we’ll have to wait until after the show – which is explosively energetic and musically ramshackle, Thug mostly shouting over the full versions of his own songs, with the vocals still turned up – and then at around 11.30pm, I am shown into the dressing room. I am told this every 30 minutes for the next five hours. We get to the venue, and I’m told Thug will be there in about 30 minutes.
In a Dazed & Confused interview earlier this year, the writer said: “Each time he speaks more than five words, it feels like an astounding gift from the universe.” He missed two photoshoots for a Complex magazine cover last year, eventually showing up at the third and answering six questions with two-word answers: “The quickest interview in history,” according to the writer. I sense she has had a few issues in the past. “It might not be a traditional interview,” warns his publicist. The plan today is to catch Thug for a few hours before his London debut to get a sense of the man. His surrealist imagery is compounded by his music videos, which combine hip-hop cliches with Lynchian dream sequences – his recent video for Best Friend features Thug walking in on himself making out with his female alter ego, before his ghost sits down to a breakfast cereal dinner party. He talks about his own beauty (“I’m a fuckin’ stunna, ass big, Hummer”) and outlandish personality (“I’m an earthling in disguise”) in a way no other rapper would.
His latest mixtape, Slime Season, presents an almost sci-fi version of rap excess. You might expect this seeming disjunction to influence his music, but his lyrics rarely ponder the realities of his complex existence, instead portraying a bombastic and often surreal version of his life.
Rumours about his sexuality abound, but Thug says he is neither gay nor straight. He doesn’t pretend to have left gang life behind – on his outro to a Dej Loaf track released last year he snarks, “As a matter of fact, I’m one of the biggest Bloods in fucking America” – but these days he is probably better known for his gender-fluidity, recently photographed in a tutu, a lace floral Gucci top and a leopard-print dress. He is one of the most interesting characters in hip-hop today, seemingly drunk on his own eccentricity. That all happened on the same day an indictment was issued claiming that Thug, along with his label boss at Cash Money Records, Birdman, conspired to have Thug’s hero and mentor Lil Wayne murdered (a charge he strenuously denies).Īll of that might create the picture of a typical gangster-turned-rapper but, in fact, nothing about Thug (which is apparently what even his closest friends call him) is typical. During the raid, police found guns, cocaine and marijuana and he was hit with three counts of felony arms possession. Whereas Tyler is a geeky rapper who has never been charged with a serious crime in his life, Young Thug had his home raided in July after he allegedly threatened to kill a mall security guard in Georgia. Meanwhile, Young Thug was gliding across the border on the Eurostar from Paris, without so much as a pat-down. Tyler, the Creator has been banned from the UK by home secretary Theresa May, apparently because he “made statements that may foster hatred, which might lead to intercommunity violence in the UK”. T he morning Young Thug is due to play his first headline show in London, another American rapper is making headlines.
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