To simply label the album as garbage would be an injustice, but hailing it as good or grand would result in lightning falling from the skies as punishment for exclaiming such a lie.
Overall, the album suffers from being in a field much more left than I care to indulge in. It’s difficult to grasp the man from the persona. Of course he compiles the statement around a bunch of other thoughts in a stream of consciousness. He also lacks any substance, there’s only one song where he gets reflective, “OD.” It’s eerie to hear him admit a problem with drugs, a big enough issue where overdosing is a fear. If he just rapped it would be easier to endure but all the singing and crooning is enough to stop the album mid-listen. At times I can enjoy his uniqueness and there’s others where I’ll relate it to a dog whistle for human eardrums. His voice is both a strength and weakness. I enjoy Thug most in small doses, even though 13 tracks aren’t many, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Two of the most esteemed Thug performances, “Blanguage” and “Skyfall” are produced by Metro, for him not to appear on Thug’s biggest project thus far is criminal. While London On da Track laid a solid foundation for Thug, the lack of Metro Boomin is disappointing. The instrumentals aren’t intricate, constructed to simply hit hard, drums explode, the basslines are drenched in the same syrup he boasts about drinking, and his off-key, high pitched voice doesn’t overwhelm the beats but works in a strange unison adding the extra color that brings it all to life. Each beat hits with the strength of a drunken dwarf swinging his axe. Production is a huge reason why he’s able to wreak havoc on the English language and retain some appeal. That’s Young Thug, his rapping on songs like “Dome,” “Numbers” and “Halftime” are jumbled and cluttered, chaotic and messy, without focus or formula, and yet somehow they work. Choe is notorious for creating images that are peculiar, in the realm of splatter painting, his art is like viewing the intricate beauty of chaos. He reminds me of the graffiti artist David Choe. I love his enthusiasm but it's numbing trying to decipher the cryptic, tongue-twisting lyricism, especially since he switches tones and flows more than Birdman gets sued in a year. The energy that Thug exudes is what keeps the album entertaining. “Check” is another strong record, fun and catchy enough to soar up charts while still containing the kind of wordplay only an oddity like Thug would think to record. He’s so strange that it’s engrossing, a level of weird that creates its own charisma. He can switch from intelligible rapping that’s pseudo-broken English, to crooning, to a gargle, and then make sounds that I’m certain aren’t from this planet, all in a single verse. He displays the eccentric, offbeat rapper that I have trouble labeling.
and Boosie made this an early favorite but it’s Thug’s verse that I found perplexing. For example, “Can’t Tell” begins with an awkward groan before he displays the energetic zest that made T.I.’s “About The Money” into a street anthem. He represents how influence and idol worship can birth originality, even if it’s a mutated hybrid style that’s almost unbearably unorthodox. Young Thug took some of the worse Lil Wayne qualities, when he was at his most inebriated and unintelligible, and morphed them into a sound that can hardly be defined.