Let’s get straight to it: if Young Thug's lyrics were less shallow, a little less off-the-shelf gangsta, we might be talking about him as one of hip hop’s bankable arena draws. It’s true that the professional rules that get you out of playing clubs and into arenas often need revision if you want to get to the next level.
But Young Thug is his own man and in ‘Jeffery’ he has produced another album of creative confidence and musical intrigue. It easily matches the heights of 2015’s ‘Barter 6’ and explores trap's outer limits while remaining tonally cogent and vocally distinctive.
It's no surprise. This cross-dressin’, word-slurrin’, autotunin’ Atlantan might just be a bonafide icon, and titling the album after his birth name perhaps emphasises that fact even further.
Identity is at the core of the record’s message, with its tracks named for, but not after, his heroes. Thus, the gloriously filthy erotic encounter described in the song Kanye West does not - it would appear - feature the man himself.
Similarly, his bars on Swizz Beatz, RiRi, Floyd Mayweather and Webbie don’t detail the achievements of their namesakes, instead opting to tread fairly familiar gangsta rap ground by traversing gaudy, often misogynistic language focused on wealth, personal beefs, ‘empire’ building, designer brands and guns.
The most interesting things about ‘Jeffery’ occur elsewhere and revolve around that unique vocal style of his. His verses frequently descend into garbled pseudo-gibberish, taking the intrinsically trap device of slurring the end of a couplet to its absolute limit. The emerging vocal is then treated heavily with autotune and echo so decipherable words come and go with random, percussive and occasionally hilarious abandon.
In this regard, Young Thug is essentially the Rowley Birkin QC of trap. And that makes ‘Jeffery’ confusing, offensive and borderline brilliant. The superficiality is a little tough to stomach, but life is confusing sometimes.
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