Punk - Young Thug
Intro:
Young Thug has been one of the most intriguing & influential artists during the past few years. The Atlanta rapper has been faced an even amount of praise & hate. Again, it truly is hard to deny the amount of impact Thug has had on the genre. He’s been in the game for 10+ years now, and is entering into OG status. Today, we’ll be looking at his 2nd official studio album “Punk”.
Strengths:
Between the engaging story told on the intro & some very motivational gems in his lyrics, this is probably the most personal, meaningful & introspective music we’ve heard from Young Thug in his career. A song like “Stupid/Asking” is creative with a nice concept of him rapping from his lady’s perspective. Thug is rapping at his best too, as there are plenty of clever lines that sound random on the surface.
His delivery & flow are unique, insane & versatile like usual. His vocals always sound as if they’re a part of the beat, and there’s moments where he’s actually rapping instead of his melodic style (Ex: “Yea Yea Yea”). When he is singing, it’s beautiful & unique (Ex: The high notes on “Stupid”). You can hear how his style has influenced others, like how Cole & Drake adapt parts of it on their features.
Almost every feature does a great job. I love A$AP Rocky’s singing & flow on his collab, and the non-Rap features on the song “Love You More” are great. It’s also easy to appreciate how the album’s posthumous guest appearances are handled respectfully. Production wise, guitar & piano melodies makeup a bulk of the beats on the album. There’s tons of variety in stye, as a hard trap banger like “Scoliosis” is very different from the borderline pop cut “Livin’ It Up”.
Weaknesses:
While I do appreciate Thug’s effort in making more meaningful songs, the album itself does not entirely remained focused on these deeper themes. Even in his lyrics, there are still some random lines sprinkled throughout the tracklist that aren’t related to anything prior or after. However, this is only really an issue on the more personal songs anyways. On top of this, there are moments where his delivery sounds like some of the artists he’s influenced (Ex: Peepin Out The Window).
Some of the slower acoustic ballads can grow to become boring after a while, although that has a lot to do with pacing. There’s also styles of production that are generic/overused like on the song “Insure My Wrist” (although the guitar lead fits beautifully & adds a lot to this specific beat). The piano keys used on the song with Future are nice, but still pretty generic. These are the same beats you can find in other artists music such as: Rod Wave, Rylo Rodriguez, & NBA Youngboy. Future even sounds a lot more unique than Thug on this same song. Last, the album as a whole is too long & could be cut down to around 14-15 songs.
Overall:
In short, this album was very different from most of Thug’s previous releases. It’s nice hearing him rap about more meaningful subjects, and continue to express his creativity. It all comes together for one of his best projects he’s released so far in his career. I think most of his core fans can appreciate this album a lot, as well as some of the Hip-Hop purist/Young Thug critics. Thank you all for reading and be sure to listen to Young Thug’s new album with the link below.
