Things that are hard to understand but totally worth it when you do:
1. Foreign languages
2. True love
3. Young Thug’s I’m Up
There are few things more rewarding than being a Young Thug fan. In addition to his constantly captivating wardrobe, memorable (to say the least) tweets and series of Instagram videos in which he uses a stack of money as a phone, Atlanta’s resident rap weirdo has blessed his fans with project after project of occasionally brilliant, always captivating music.
Thugger’s 2015 was damn near bulletproof — if the ridiculous gossip regarding label politics and his beef with Lil Wayne weren’t enough, Thug released a critically acclaimed album and not one but two mixtapes in his Slime Season series.
So, when the most polarizing rapper in the world announced his first release of 2016 would be Slime Season 3, fans had every reason to be excited — previous Slime Season projects explored every imaginable creative crevasse in Thugger’s cerebrum. Of course, given Young Thug’s reputation as a human experiment in unpredictability, things didn’t go quite as planned. In a Twitter rant, he announced he was changing the name of Slime Season 3 to I’m Up — then said afterwards that SS3 was still coming.
But regardless of the chaos behind the scenes, I’m Up is the latest Young Thug project to hit the streets — and, with any luck, the radio airwaves.
At this point, nothing should be less strange than Young Thug’s strangeness. Since 2011, the rapper has been pushing the boundaries of what is considered rap with mixtape after mixtape of yelping and crooning over gliding 808s from Atlanta’s finest trap producers. And while I’m Up doesn’t experiment with anything new for the hip-hop mad scientist, it’s a half-hour of riveting, edge-of-your-seat bangers with enough variation to appease even the most tired Thug fans.
“F Cancer (Boosie),” the tape’s opening track, is one of Young Thug’s most straightforward and impressive in recent memory. The hook’s rapid-fire melody is an obvious earworm, and the verses are aggressive, entertaining invitations to rap along (good luck). “Cancer’s” beat is a throwback slice of mid-2000s Cash Money Records glory produced by Mike Will Made-It. It’s a tribute to the sound Thug’s hero-turned-rival Lil Wayne once pioneered.
But for the most part, even the track’s less provocatively titled tracks are successes. “For My People” boasts a clanging, tribal beat — something that wouldn’t sound out of place on an M.I.A. album. Mid-tempo cuts such as “King TROUP” and “Family” offer up the R&B-tinged slow jams prominent on Slime Season 2. While Thugger’s most popular tracks tend to show off his machine-gun flow — “Stoner” and “Danny Glover” come to mind — slower songs like these give his crooning a gentle, sweet feel.
If you’re worried about an album of emotional ballads, there’s no need to be: The braggadocious “Bread Winners” (“They dig all the shit that I’m kicking/ I just bought my bitch some new titties”) and the Metro Boomin-helmed “Hercules” are among Thugger’s most fiery, raunchy trucks, with bass begging to be the soundtrack of strip clubs everywhere.
I’m Up isn’t without its faults. Too many guest verses from Atlanta affiliates bog down an album on which Thug is the clear star. The album’s low-end is slightly off; poor mixing ruins the crowd-pleasing bass of more than one track.
But none of these are serious issues when one of modern rap’s most intriguing talents is flexing his incredible creativity over nine concise, exciting songs. And while I’m Up might not be the album originally promised to fans, it still subverts rap standards in an effortless fell swoop and manages to be a hell of a listen at the same time.
