>>60036549>music is soullessly void, has no depth, he cant rapYou're joking right?
Barter 6's barely there production doesn’t so much frame Young Thug’s rapping as it does provide a surface for his words to dance upon, to explore the art of rapping in multiple dimensions: melodically, rhythmically, lyrically, and in terms of composition. His voice glides through the thick absence of sound. He’s responsible for a lot of the songwriting; he knocks out his own hooks, and his writing speaks to his use of phrasing, his backgrounds, the flows he uses, and the way he plays with each song’s internal architecture. On “Halftime,” his car-screech adlibs are elongated—it’s as if a camera panned suddenly from a pinprick of light, causing it to blur—so he can change tones, harmonizing this background yelp with his own main vocals.
In 2014, it was easy to be dismissive of Thug’s lyrical abilities, especially since many struggled to understand him at all. Besides, on his biggest pop records, the hooks could do plenty of the heavy lifting. Perhaps resisting those crutches is an intentional maneuver, an assertion that Thug intends to be recognized not just for his eccentricities or his chart-toppers, but as an all-around artist. His lyrical style stands out in a number of ways; the most obvious is his ear for figurative language. Thug’s similes often build upon familiar imagery, but move in unexpected directions. On “Check,” he opens rapping about a “Mink coat with the rolls like a Shar Pei”; later on, he raps, “All my niggas, they hard, call them beetles.” These aren’t punchlines intended to get rap fans doubling over laughing (although they can be funny in their unpredictability). Thug seems more interested in an original and idiosyncratic approach to imagery, in discovering pathways in language that haven’t already been heavily traveled.
