Thug’s voice is foreign, strange, and even entrancing to the primarily hetero-normative discourse of rap through his sheer alterity. Regardless of the form, Barter 6 offers a fantastic explication of the capabilities Thug has been honing - the capabilities of liminality. As such, the new “retail mixtape” format that has recently become vogue nonchalantly establishes a listenable brand-space for the rapper’s voice to further assert their “product.” Since Thug’s delivery is so paradigmatic, the format works incredibly well we are “buying into” the experience we have come to expect and want from such a visionary application of the human voice in a hip-hop environment. It is this acknowledgement of extreme difference as the weird, as opposed to the classically embellished, that makes Young Thug so compelling his power is in his ability to subvert the codified lines of coolness in hip-hop into unknown territories, places where only the uninhibited voice can go.īarter 6 is an obvious, tight application of Thug’s lawless style brought into the space of a linear album, letting his flow drip and collect in horizontal spaces, as opposed to being sharply crafted like in his iconic hits, “Stoner,” “Danny Glover,” and “Lifestyle.” In this sense, the pacing of the record is not dissimilar to Drake’s If You’re Reading This - the instrumentals ride ahead unassumingly, giving a wide lane for Thug to make his impression.
Whereas Wayne seems constantly bogged down in the struggle with his commitment to historical top-rapper iconography (and the traditional text that comes accompanied with it), Thug clearly could care less. Such a brazen freedom of delivery established a new continuum that found further manifestations in Future and perhaps its most flamboyant form in Young Thug.
The voice seemed constantly on the verge of tears. Obviously, the hyper-masculine discourse of “top-shelf” rap had produced enough of the la familia kingpin archetypes to arrive at a new characterization, a sort of villainous, harlequin-esque wild-style flow that was locked in a perpetual, liquidy upper-register. Lil Wayne proliferated an alien identity that was oddly attractive out of sheer weirdness his delivery was unrestrained, even borderline grotesque.
Throughout Lil Wayne’s dynastic run, he proclaimed straight up that he “was not a human being.” While the tactic of proclaiming extreme, elevated difference is common - e.g., “I Am A God,” “The Ruler’s Back,” etc. Despite the multiple, important, and laborious discussions that such an analysis can lead to, and also considering the immense amount of excruciating baggage that comes packaged alongside Barter 6, the only discussion offered here will be an analysis of Young Thug as a voice that helps liquidate the autonomy of rap dynasties into a more total freedom.
Although the listener, and perhaps most disastrously the critic, are experiencing this spectacle virtually and problematically, it’s an incredibly real thing for the artist. The point-click-and-access mentality (the male gaze) is regularly materialized into boastful music, a music that proclaims how the world can be owned, bought, and sold, but often one that can’t be held accountable - a world constantly slipping into fantastical, inherited dream-images of royalty, invincibility, or childhood superhero fetishes that are being lived by grown, adult men. The drama, as a creative force, seems to be perpetually ahead and behind the curve, as territories are discovered and/or squatted on amidst incessant bickering about cultural agency or material propriety. The first few seconds of Barter 6 have Young Thug cooly whispering a cursive remark to the beat: “Pull that shit up fool, it’s ours.” It might not come as a surprise, especially since the central drama within mainstream hip-hop often involves the idea of ownership.