The vaguely country aesthetic paves the way for the Internet joke ready moments the record’s going to inevitably be known for. The formula of coffee shop guitar strumming and tambourine shakes that give way to rattling trap drums is intact. Post Malone’s primary collaborators, Rex Kudo and Charlie Handsome, handle the bulk of the album, and they bring along the arsenal of sounds that helped Post go platinum. The album has two parts: the infinitely entertaining albeit kitschy ‘country billy/yeehaw’ moments and the traditional Wheezy and London helmed Thug songs. BTG in many ways plays similar to last year’s Stoney by Post Malone, simply presented in a more critic-friendly wrapping. The innovations on Beautiful Thugger Girls won’t be nearly as important to audiences as the likability of the personality behind it. If this were a weaker record it might buckle under its own preoccupation with being taken seriously, but there are enough genuinely fun moments to stave off those pitfalls. At its worst, it’s a long form continuation of the “Mask Off” effect: a commercial preoccupation with black sounds juxtaposed against things that, for casual listeners, seem in total opposition to them, e.g. In reality, the whole album is more the spiritual successor to Andre 3000 singing to Rosario Dawson 14 years ago on “She Lives in My Lap” than to a country record. The only difference is Beautiful Thugger Girls feels more concerned with convincing critics and listeners that it’s serious music, even though no one seemed to challenge that assertion unless they owned more than one pair of Lugz in 1997. Screaming ‘this is my singing album,’ doesn’t mean it’s much different in DNA than past projects. The main complaint against the album might be that it telegraphs its intentions. It joins the ranks of recent releases like HNDRXX and Thot Breaker-and the difference in quality between all three isn’t much. “She Just Wanna Party” is the strongest of the three based on this line alone: “And if you feel like I wasted your time, I reimburse/Now I don’t mind putting a little interest on it.” It’s so fun and honest and corny, it does a lot with a little which is the common thread the album’s tightest moments share.īeautiful Thugger Girls comes on the heels of a larger movement currently in rap towards popcentric passion projects meant to re-energize a stagnant fan base. Gunna’s gruff crooning, “I just wanna see tomorrow/I’m tryna see you tomorrow” gives Thug’s subdued vocals a nice foil. In contrast, Gunna’s late addition vocals to “ Tomorrow Til Infinity” work precisely because of the creative shorthand between the two. While “Family Don’t Matter” is a perfect example of pop experimentation from Thug, it feels like Thug and his team are trying to hedge their bets by shoehorning in a more traditional pop vocalist like Millie Go Lightly in case the experiment doesn’t pay off. In short, it’s a mess of ideas with a lack of commitment to any one of them. Opener “Family Don’t Matter” is inimitable Thug with lyrics like, “Don’t you panic/don’t you take this shit for granted/don’t you panic,” prefaced with randomly sweet sentiments like dog sitting for your significant other, and playfully bookended by half a dozen bars of free association. It’s as peerless as the man who created it, even when it relies on novelty to bring lapsed fans back in.īeautiful Thugger Girls’ opening salvo is the album’s strongest run of songs. Yet Beautiful Thugger Girls is less a course correction than an artistic statement that can stand outside the wide shadow cast by its creator - one that exists solely on its own merits. And Jeffery failed to produce a radio single and its biggest hit was a viral video about how Young Thug failed to show up for his own video. No one, especially Thug, can name more than two songs on I’m Up. But the Slime Season trilogy got weaker as it progressed. While Young Thug has always been transcendent, he’s also always been a genius more known for brilliant moments than coherent solo masterpieces.īarter 6 is one of the most seminal trap albums of the last decade. But that’s not the case with rap, a genre where fans continually debate sales figures as though they still matter in a streaming era. In any other genre, half a dozen albums in two years wouldn’t require a substantial reassessment to get fans back on board. Dan From The Internet‘s heart’s so cold he needs an ice box.
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