By 2013’s 1017 Thug, Thug’s 'weirdness' had become an easy hook, a rapper who sang and hollered odes to lean and compared his jewelry to Pokémon. The projects often felt like extended stylistic experiments, ranging wildly in quality-but when inspiration struck, it sounded like nothing else coming out of his Atlanta hometown, from guileless outsider-pop ballads to completely unclassifiable vocal performance clinics. Over the course of his three-part I Came From Nothing tape series, Thug’s now-singular voice took shape. Far from a public idol-killing, or zany sideshow, it’s composed, patient, even subtle-an album neither fans nor detractors saw coming. And on Barter 6, Thug yet again dodges any easy narrative. Thug seems to recognize the power of his own mystique, headline-grabbing yet somehow unknowable: 'Every time I dress myself, I go muhfucking viral,' he crows, bemused, on 'Halftime'.

But he’s always seemed to delight in playful misdirection, quietly reveling in the chaos provoked by his mere existence, from the vaguely gender-bending fashions to the pet names for his friends. Idol or not, Thug hasn’t directly emulated Wayne since his debut tape, 2011’s I Came From Nothing.

Like most everything Thugger has done in the last year and a half, it made people confused: What kind of god-level shade was this? Is he taking any of this remotely seriously? And what in fuck’s sake is his endgame with this album, the name of which changed days before its release to Barter 6 after Wayne threatened to sue? Barter 6 was already the year’s most controversial rap album-or 'retail mixtape,' as if the distinction really matters-before it even dropped.īut Barter 6 has almost nothing to do with Lil Wayne, save its provocative title (which I’m saying is more Treachery of Images than aimless troll, anyway) and a handful of scattered lyrical shots. But then, in closing: ' Ha haaa,' punctuated with a trollish tongue wag.

I won’t ever in my life swap words with him,' Thug pledged-days away from releasing his imminent debut album, Carter 6, a title hijacked from Wayne, whose own Carter V languished in Cash Money purgatory. Look how he handled the most surreal rap beef of 2015 in a recent Instagram message to Lil Wayne. He thrives in gray areas, animated by the electricity generated by the tension of his own contradictions, and he never, ever offers a straightforward explanation.

Young thug barter 6