>>60037057Young Thug sounds nothing like Gucci (or Lil Wayne, with whom Thug is frequently compared). His lyrical approach is closer to a rapper like Raekwon. Any close reading of his lyrics suggest comparisons between The Barter 6 and Wayne’s Carter series, for which it is named, are a total misdirection. It’s something Thug jokes about while trolling homophobic listeners on “Halftime”: “I might eat it, I might lick it, but I swear i’ll never bite ‘em!” Of course, Wayne shaped Thug’s approach to rapping, and still resides within his musical D.N.A. But where Wayne shredded his vocals against hip-hop’s formal constraints, Thug is a synthesist, a rapper of control, an artist in the process of reassembly.
The playfulness of his poetics aside, Thug’s rapping on The Barter VI is more heavily autobiographical than your typical ATL hitmaker. And he’s living an emotional cocktail, his moment of triumph flooded with tense anxiety. These moods crash and blur on songs like “Od,” an oath of loyalty to friends and family set off by the knife’s-edge recklessness of its opening lines: “I think I’m ODing on drugs / I just started a fight inside the club.” Or “Numbers,” a mournful, paranoiac song of success. Violence never feels far from its surface.
The tape’s cohesive sound lets guest verses seem as if they’ve entered Thug’s universe, rather than distracting from it. This isn’t a bland consistency, where a familiar mood papers over a lack of ideas. Instead, each song captures its own emotional tenor, suggesting shadows and crevices unexplored after each listen—a real world-building exercise. While the album doesn’t have a strict narrative, its sequencing implies a very deliberate shape. (It even starts with a strong table-setting opening line, with Thug rapping, “Hopped out my mothafuckin’ bed!”)
