Young Thug’s “Business Is Business” Proves He Can Still Be A GOAT From Prison

So Young Thug’s in jail. Big whoop. But he blessed us on Friday with a new project titled Business Is Business and my initial reaction is that business is in fact business. This is a good album. No one else is dropping something like this from prison. It’s obviously not the most coherent project in the world but that’s basically a disclaimer because it’s still incredibly well put together under the circumstances. A good mix of soft and hard trap beats with a good ratio of Thug weirdness to balance it out. It may not be the statement some would want from a major release….but he dropped it from prison. I like Young Thug and I don’t really care that he killed people. So yeah, I said it. 

If you can only choose one version of this album choose the Metro Boomin version. Metro has always been really good at stuff like this. And he shows it here. The Young Thug version is solid, good even, but Metro’s version rearranges it into something that works much more efficiently than the normal version. He maintains the energy of the albums best tracks but perfectly dilutes it across the track list. He also spaces weightier tracks through the whole album instead of clustering them together. Not everything is easy here-Parade On Cleveland, the original intro is right in the middle of the record, which is a little messy but it’s a good track and you can’t cut it. But overall, the album works much better as Metro’s Version. 

The songs on this record are very solid, many of them quite good. The beat selection is excellent, if understated. Some songs, such as “Want Me Dead”, “Abracadabra” and “Wit Da Racks” lean more heavily towards instrumentals that serve a melody and sit in the background. “Money On The Dresser” has a sparse organ beat that sounds like Thug showed up to vampire’s house and no one was home so he started playing himself. “Gucci Grocery Bag” is clearly an old song that would be filler if not for featuring the fun “Gucci Pucci” beginning, at which point I turn it off. The beat on Hellcat Kenny is like a Carti joint, bouncy, mischievous and menacing. A lot of it is standard trap fare but it’s good trap fare. 

“Uncle M”, short for Uncle Murder, is a bold choice considering Thug’s court case, especially since Thug’s lyrics are looked over as evidence. It’s got this cavernous, rabid beat with Travis Scott spinning around in the background. Thug hammers down with a flow that feels sadistic and heavy, singing about “Uncle Murder”, who runs around committing gang murders. It’s a fun track, good for a car with loud speakers. 

“Jonesboro” is a standout track, putting Thug on the type of beat we normally don’t hear him on. It’s an emotional track, one where Thug’s tone says as much as his words. The soulful samples and orchestral beat push along the cinematic opener (on Metro’s Version at least) and give the song an emotional tenor. It feels far more intentional than many of the other songs on this album, like Thug is actually ruminating in his jail cell, reframing his mythology. Something like “Wit Da Racks” is great but we’ve heard those tracks before. “Jonesboro” feels fresh and new and that’s a good thing.

I begrudgingly admit that “Oh U Went” with Drake is a pretty good track, with Drake actually being the standout. He blends rapping and smirking effectively enough on this track to remind me of the days when Drake being the feature made the song a Drake song. Drake is good on this album, both times providing a welcome change-up that serves the song. 

“Abracadabra” sounds like vintage Travis-Thug, dark and melodic, over a synth bell beat. It’s somewhat basic but it hits all the right notes. If it had come out in 2018 I would’ve thought it was futuristic. It’s a hidden gem on this album. It could easily be a B side in the Travis record. Here it’s not quite a centerpiece and not quite filler. That’s part of the pickle you run into trying to assemble a record from jail. Some of these are leaks from a while back, others more recent and then some are brand new. It’s a tough conglomeration to make work with an eccentric musician like Thug, but this record, in both versions, pulls it off. 

One add-on to the Metro Version, “Money” is a well known leak that works off the Monty Python song. It’s a shameless cash grab,a  trap pop melody bouncing off 808s with sides of Juice Wrld (R.I.P) and Nikki Minaj (side eye). Juice Wrld is tuneful but eerie in his posthumous appearance and Nikki Minaj is still Nikki Minaj (side eye). This is probably a good cut for the average listener, who is unlikely to be a Thug connoisseur. This song is in some ways a microcosm, entertaining, a cash grab, and frankly a little dated. Of course that’s not Young Thug’s fault. A lot of trap has started feeling dated. It’s been 15 years now. You can only do so much over synth bells and 808s. 

This album and the circumstances surrounding it is perhaps evidence of trap’s declining status. Young Thug, one of trap’s most influential figures, locked in jail, singing through a jail phone. Metro has risen to household name with his recent output but in many ways his success has come as trap begins to decline. The album and its production responds to that decline, putting Thug on some new, more integrated beats that let him do new things, but there’s still a lot of Synth Bell/808/Freestyle tracks on here that, while fun, don’t do much besides meet the conventions. 

It follows the cycle-when you want to know when something is played out, listen to ads. I knew it was over for drill when I heard drill on Christmas ads. No coming back from that. And the ad libs? Insult to injury. Trap is suffering the same fate that surf rock, pop punk, the 80s synth metal mash and other iconic American soundscapes suffered from-it became a soundtrack rather than a statement. This record is nothing that we fundamentally haven’t heard before and while the genre has reached its peak, this is still a good trap album. It’s somewhat like blues, a method and a mood as much as a sonically defined genre. And Young Thug can still make a good trap album, even from prison. 

He does some new things and goes to some new places but when he needs to, he wields his old flows with weight and edge. “Mad Dog” and “Uncle Murder” are some of the most riveting work on here even though they do seem familiar. “Wit Da Racks” is a jolt of electricity, with some fun features. “Hell Cat Kenny” with Lil Uzi Vert is weird and disturbed, with some classic lines you can’t unhear from both parties. Thug’s never been much of a storyteller but he’s a great energy conductor. Listening to him is like watching a Faraday cage fly through a storm cloud, picking up varying degrees of electricity as it goes. It’s not a super stellar, groundbreaking genre piece. Young Thug needs money and it shows. There’s a song on this thing called “Gucci Grocery Bag.” But for a standard collection of Young Thug songs it’s more hits than misses and that’s a solid feat when you’re behind bars.