Abstract

We are currently undergoing a colossal shift in the hip-hop landscape. From

the outside, the world of hip-hop is generally looked at as a place of unnecessary

vulgarity and danger. While this may be a real historic theme of the genre, the tide is

quickly changing. An influx of new rappers and artists who express themselves in a

way never seen before by this genre are doing all they can to change perceptions of

rap. Acts such as David Bowie and Prince may have sparked the ideas, but artists

like Young Thug are introducing these concepts and looks to a brand new audience.

Young Thug is shifting the ideology behind what a rapper looks and sounds like.

Intro

Ever since its introduction to mainstream society, hip-hop has perplexed

people across cultures all over the world. From the lyrical content to the way the

artists carried themselves, rappers have long since been a hot topic of discussion for

people who simply don’t understand what some refer to as “The Culture.”

The culture is something that is constantly shifting. Thanks to Tupac,

hypermasculinity and baggy clothing largely defined the ‘90s while Sean Combs (aka

P. Diddy) made sure the ‘00s were focused on inflated egos and Black-owned

streetwear brands. The ‘10s, however, appear to belong to Young Thug and his

effortless blend of mumble rap and high fashion. Young Thug has taken hip-hop into

the age of originality and acceptance in a way that we haven’t seen before.

Methods
 The methodology behind this paper consisted of compiling secondary

research.

Scholarly sources such as previous studies and books were used in order to

find facts and figures about the presence of homophobia and representations of

masculinity in the black community and hip-hop community in general. These

sources, in addition to newspapers such as the New York Times, discuss the history

of these communities and how feelings like towards them have changed through the

decades.

Understanding the content of the music is also essential. Websites like

RapGenius, a crowd-sourced collection of lyrics and the meanings behind the lyrics,

were used as well to give accurate lyrics that could be used to support claims that

were made in the scholarly sources. In addition to these, interviews and cover

stories done about Young Thug provide a more personal look into his life and

explain more about who he is as a person. These articles were mostly published in

magazines such as GQ, Vogue, and Wired and an array of hip hop blogs offer more

insights in Young Thug’s thought about his music and fashion choices. Ultimately

these research efforts will result in some understanding of what Young Thug hopes

to achieve with his nonconformity in the world of fashion and hip-hop alike.

Literature Review

History

A growing trend in today’s hip-hop landscape is rappers referring to

themselves rock stars. We’ve heard it from everyone from Lil Uzi Vert to Post
Malone and quite frankly, it makes sense. Todays rap stars are living the “playboy

lifestyle” that was popularized by rockers in the 60s and 70s. Many of these rappers

cite various rock stars as their biggest inspirations and are tearing down musical

boundaries by incorporating elements of multiple genres in their music.1 These

rappers are also living quite similar lives in regards to how they present themselves

to the masses with a newfound emphasis on high fashion in addition to lyrical

references to parties and drug use. This trend of declaring oneself a rock star in

today’s rap world can be traced back to a 2015 interview that Young Thug did with

GQ when he shared that he wears women’s jeans because they fit like a rock star.

Thug went on to say that he started wearing women’s clothing when he was just 12

years old and that 90 percent of his wardrobe is women’s clothing.2 One of the more

overlooked parts of this interview, though, came when Thug talks about when he

started dressing like this: “When I was 12 or some shit, started gambling, getting my

own money. My dad wouldn’t buy me tight pants. I had to get my own money to buy

them.”

This quote brings to light the rampant homophobia found throughout the

history of hip-hop. A perfect example of this can be found in one of rap’s most

notorious beefs: Nas vs. Jay-Z. Nas’ “Ether”, arguably the most famous dis track in

history, refers to Jay-Z as “Gay-Z” and his label, Roc-a-Fella Records, as “Cock-a-Fella

Records.” Nas also calls Jay a “faggot” in two separate instances in the track. Jay-Z’s

1Guan, Frank. “How Rap Reveals What a 'Rock Star' Really Means.” Vulture, New York Media LLC., 20
Oct. 2017, www.vulture.com/2017/10/how-rap-reveals-what-a-rock-star-really-means.html.

2Green, Mark Anthony. “Young Thug Did Not Try to Kill Lil Wayne, Does Wear Women's Clothes.” GQ,
GQ, 28 Sept. 2015, www.gq.com/story/young-thug-hyun35-album-interview.
response track to “Ether”, titled “Supa Ugly,” featured the lines: “And since you

infatuated with sayin’ that gay shit/I guess you was kissin my dick when you was

kissin’ that bitch.” Author and professor Marc Lamont Hill mentions that this type of

lyrical outing is done in a largely unpersuasive way in order to simply humiliate the

other and gain the upper hand in the battle. No one ever really questioned whether

Nas and Jay-Z were straight which speaks to the desensitization to homophobic

slurs in today’s culture. The fact that “gay” was the most insulting word Nas could

come up with speaks volumes about the headspace of rappers as well. 3

Interestingly, Nas and Jay-Z’s beef took place throughout the years 2001 and 2002.

In 2002 Young Thug was 11 years old; one year before his dad supposedly refused

to buy him tight pants.

The earlier 2000s were fascinating because rappers had finally begun to

experiment in the fashion world while simultaneously keeping the use of

homophobic language in hip-hop at an all time high. A wonderful example of this is

the Harlem-bred Cam’ron who famously wore pink fur and drove around in a pink

Range Rover at the same time that he was bringing the phrase “no homo” to the

mainstream.4 This is also the same time that P. Diddy and Jay-Z’s causal clothing

3
Hill, Marc Lamont. “Scared Straight: Hip-Hop, Outing, and the Pedagogy of Queerness.” Review of
Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, vol. 31, no. 1, 2009, pp. 29–54.,
doi:10.1080/10714410802629235.

4 Caramanica, Jon. "Sign of the Times: Hooking Up." New York Times Magazine, Mar 08, 2015, pp. 59-60,
ProQuest,
https://ezproxy.elon.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1661568340?accountid=10730.
brands, Sean John and Rocawear respectively, popped up. Both of these artists were

using homophobic slurs at the time.

A content analysis done in 2016 looked at 527 songs by Black artists between

1990 and 2010 coding for themes of masculinity. The study found that themes of

hypermasculinity were prevalent and most likely to characterize Black men as

competitive, dangerous, sex-focused, and materialistic. They also found that the

music portrayed women as emotionally expressive and as sexual objects and that

this portrayal of both men and women in these facets increased over time. These

themes were more frequent in hip-hop music than any other genre.5

Fashion

Saying that Young Thug is comfortable in his sexuality would be an

enormous understatement. Thug’s album cover for his project “Jeffery” features him

wearing an extraordinarily intricate purple ruffled dress. The photographer who

shot the cover explains that Young Thug knew immediately when he saw the dress

that he had to wear it on his album cover.6 Emma Allwood points out that this cover

has more in common with fashion innovator David Bowie than it does with other

current hip-hop artists who flaunt the usual things like gold chains and tattoos. Thug

5Avery, Lanice R., et al. “Tuning Gender: Representations of Femininity and Masculinity in Popular Music
by Black Artists.” Journal of Black Psychology, vol. 43, no. 2, 2016, pp. 159–191. Sage Journals,
doi:10.1177/0095798415627917.

6Dandridge-Lemco, Ben. “How Young Thug's JEFFERY Album Cover Came Together.” The FADER, The
FADER, 12 Sept. 2016, www.thefader.com/2016/08/26/young-thug-my-name-is-jeffery-album-cover-
photographer.
is blurring the rules of gender and fashion in much the same way as Bowie in a time

that the world needs it most. Allman also says that Thug is “expanding our

expectations of what a rapper can be and how they should look.”7 Young Thug has

also worn a dress in a high profile ad campaign for Calvin Klein that simply said, “I

disobey.” The rest of the campaign featured a video of Young Thug stating that he

“feels like there’s no such thing as gender.” Thug has also worn dresses for cover

stories in magazines like Dazed and Fader as well as being known for wearing kids

sized dresses as shirts. Splinter writer, Tahirah Hairston, says Young Thug is

“defying gender stereotypes and agitating the way hip-hop defines black

masculinity.” This comfortability extends into his vernacular as well with Thug

being known to call his close male friends “bae” and “hubby.”8 This has got him

criticized recently by rappers like The Game who, in this day and age, still try and

use gay as an insult.

One of Young Thug’s most iconic moments, however, took place in 2016 at

the VFiles fashion show for designer Rushemy Botter when Thug, who was sitting in

the front row, stood up and stopped a model mid-walk in order to adjust his collar.9

7Allwood, Emma Hope. “Young Thug Is the Closest Music Style Icon We Have to Bowie.” Dazed, 26 Aug.
2016, www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/32579/1/young-thug-is-the-closest-style-icon-we-have-to-
bowie.

8Hairston, Tahirah. “Why Rapper Young Thug Wears Women's Clothing.” Splinter, Splinternews.com, 29
Sept. 2015, splinternews.com/why-rapper-young-thug-wears-womens-clothing-1793851376.

9Satenstein, Liana. “Young Thug Is Fashion Week's Most Enthusiastic Guest.” Vogue, Vogue, 25 May
2017, www.vogue.com/article/young-thug-fashion-week-enthusiastic-guest.
Music

When describing how Young Thug makes his music, producer Dun Deal said,

“He would just draw what he wanted to do on paper. He would draw like, a picture

with weird shapes and signs.”10 Former Grantland writer, Shea Serrano, tried his

best to describe Young Thug’s music by saying, “Imagine if you took both of your

feet and stuck them in a bucket full of warm mud and wiggled your toes around.

Except that mud isn’t mud, it’s your soul.”11 Charlie Lock tried his hand at an

explanation as well stating, “If Kanye’s “Say You Will” showed us the steps for

emotional transparency in rap, and Drake’s confessional style familiarized us with

the moves, the vocal instrumentation and emotional onomatopoeia that is Young

Thug came in and started doing some avant-garde interpretive dance.”12 Thug

makes music that has to be heard to be understood. As a man who can hit three

octaves in just one word, Young Thug uses his voice as an instrument more than

anyone in recent memory. Darin Flynn, Chair of Linguistics at University of Calgary,

thinks that Young Thug’s purposefully slurred rap makes his music more

interesting. He compares Thug’s music to a Rorschach inkblot test and says that the

interpretation of his songs depends almost entirely on the listener. Flynn also calls

Thug’s rapping “a reduction in speech” which is when people are not self-

10 Greene, Jayson. “Chaos Theory: The Glorious Unpredictability of Young Thug.”Pitchfork, Condé Nast,
28 Sept. 2015, pitchfork.com/features/overtones/9727-chaos-theory-the-glorious-unpredictability-of-
young-thug/.

11 Serrano, Shea, et al. The Rap Year Book: the Most Important Rap Song from Every Year since 1979,
Discussed, Debated, and Deconstructed. Abrams Image, 2015.

12Locke, Charley. “Young Thug Isn't Rapping Gibberish, He's Evolving Language.”Wired, Conde Nast, 15
Oct. 2015, www.wired.com/2015/10/young-thug-evolution-of-language/.
monitoring what they say. Flynn argues that this gives us a glimpse into Thug’s real

life and emotions.13 Young Thug knows that his own creative process is different

from most people and said that he has to think as he goes because he can’t

remember 16 bars unless he writes them down. He claims that he can make a

perfect song in ten minutes and that it took him exactly eight to make his hit song

Danny Glover, which peaked at #39 on the Billboard charts.14 In perhaps the most

Young Thug move to date, he named his debut album “Hy!£UN35,” a completely

indecipherable word - just like his lyrics.

Discussion

Born Jeffery Williams in southern Atlanta, Young Thug was the tenth of

eleven children. Spending his entire life growing up in the projects, Thug doesn’t fit

the description of someone who will grow up to be a fashion icon. One would think

that there would be more pressing issues on the mind of a young kid living with

nearly a dozen siblings in public housing. Not for Young Thug. He knew what he was

going to do since he was a little kid. “I always felt like I was going to be the man,” he

says. “I guess that’s why I became it. I always felt like I was going to have money,

13Flynn, Darin. A Linguist Breaks Down Young Thug's Vocal Style. Genius, 16 Aug. 2017, A Linguist
Breaks Down Young Thug's Vocal Style.

14 Sandberg, Patrik. “Inside the Eccentric World of Young Thug.” Dazed, 11 Aug. 2015,
www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/25802/1/young-thug-eccentric-in-chief.
even when I was young. If it’s something you want, you just keep going and strive

for it. I always wanted this.” Thug mentioned wanting to wear women’s clothing at

the age of 10 and music videos as far back as 2010 demonstrate the young artist’s

unique sense of style compared to his contemporaries. The music video for “I Got It”

by Ca$h Out and Young Thug features Thug in a dual color polo shirt, tight pants, a

cross body bag and a lip ring. This is quite a departure from the looks of the rest of

the men in the video who wear loose fitting t-shirts and hoodies to go with their

baggy pants. This video was shot in 2010.

I believe in order to properly understand Young Thug; we must first look at

who came before him. Thug has stated that his biggest influences were Lil Wayne

and Kanye West, arguably the two most influential hip-hop artists over the last

decade. Perhaps not surprisingly, both of them have shaped the industry not only

through their music, but also their style. Kanye West, of course, has his own line of

high fashion clothing and has released countless designs that have sparked

impersonations from some of the biggest names in fashion. The most notable

example of which could be found in the release of his Yeezy Boost 700, which began

the trend of “dad shoes” and was copied by the likes of Balenciaga and Gucci. In

terms of music, West has been known to be more willing to experiment than most

other artists. With albums like 808s and Heartbreak and Yeezus, West used trends

that no one else would ever think about bringing into hip-hop. West started singing,

using electronic beats, and layering his vocals with an excess of Auto-Tune and vocal

manipulation in order to more properly convey his moods and messages. With the
rise of artists like Drake and Future and even Young Thug, it is easy to see how far

West’s influence has stretched.

Lil Wayne, another hip-hop icon, has a similar resume. Wayne founded the

brand TrukFit and has made some iconic fashion choices in

his own right, once wearing a pair of silver ladies leopard

print jeggings during a performance at the VMAs in 2011.

Wayne is also a pioneer in the Auto-Tune movement and is

noted as an influence by a vast number of young artists who

are opting to convey more mood and feelings in their music as

opposed to deeper and more complex lyrics.

In addition to these two, we must look at what is more

than likely Young Thug’s biggest influence, whether he

realizes it or not. This is the only place he’s ever lived. This is the place that made

him who he is. This is Atlanta.

The city with arguably the most influence in the hip-hop world has bred

other forward thinking, uber-unique acts like Andre 3000 (of OutKast) and CeeLo

Green. It has been found that childhood experiences directly effect who we become

as adults. Although most studies done tend to focus on harmful habits like drugs and

alcohol, there is no reason this ideology wouldn’t apply to positive creative fields as

well.

Young Thug has managed to put himself in a unique position where he is not

only influencing the next generation of young artists, but also his generation of

current artists as well. Perhaps the most significant cosign he’s gotten happened just
last month in an interview with Pitchfork when one of the most notable hip-hop

artist in the world, Chance the Rapper, praised Thug as a major influence: “I spent a

lot of time in Georgia and Atlanta and working with some artists that are close

friends of mine. Donald Glover, Quavo and, one of my biggest influences right now is

Young Thug." He explained, "He's super dope and I don't want to give away all his

secrets but he showed me a lot of stuff and one of the things that has helped me a lot

later in my career, towards the end of Coloring Book and the stuff I'm working on

now is a process called punch cutting. Instead of using a pen and try to write an

entire piece and then attack it on the mic separately and hope that all the inflections

and rhythms you had in mind when you wrote it are still there, you write it by

recording it."

Thug has even managed to become a significant influence to some major

artists that came before him. This “old guard” of rappers are generally more

hardheaded and less likely to accept the new and constantly evolving hip-hop

industry. Jay-Z called out these rappers in a lyric that many people associated with

Young Thug when he rapped “And old niggas, y’all stop acting brand new/ Like 2pac

ain’t have a nose ring too.” Jay is calling out these old “hip-hop purists” who love

Tupac but hate on younger artists who do things people would consider feminine as

well (like having a nose ring). Young Thug has gone on to thank Jay for that lyric.

Jay-Z also mentioned Young Thug in a string of tweets before his induction into the

Songwriters Hall of Fame that reference a plethora of artists who inspire him. Kanye

West, one of Young Thug’s two biggest influences, has also publicly declared that he

considers Thug an inspiration in a tweet from 2016 in which he said, “Young Thug is
super inspiring to me. Amazing artist!!!” followed by a link to Thug’s newest

mixtape, Slime Season 3.

In perhaps an even more fitting fashion, Elton John has also been quite vocal

about his appreciation for Young Thug. In an interview with Noisey, John said that he

inquired about Young Thug to his record label after hearing a

Thug song on the radio because he “loves that record!” He even

went on to compare Thug to John Lennon in terms of originality

and unexpectedness. The two then met up at John’s Atlanta

residence where Elton John Instagrammed a photo of the pair

with the caption “Look who popped by for cup of tea? So happy

to meet Young Thug today in Atlanta. Love his work and his new

album ‘I’m Up’.”

This influence on the youth by Young Thug couldn’t come

at a more perfect time. With The White House overrun by racist, power hungry

white men, our country has seemingly gone in the opposite direction and become a

place of acceptance and being true to yourself. There is no better representation of

this than Young Thug, himself. A black man from the projects with painted nails who

publicly refers to his friends as “hubby” and “my love” is simply a mirror of where

we are going now as a society. These remarks are not made in private though, Thug

is not afraid to make comments on instagram saying exactly how he feels, no matter

how they may be construed by the public.

Comments by Young Thug (thuggerthugger1) made on Instagram
posts by other artists.

Originality is something that Young Thug has in bunches and is something

that is coveted by brands across the world. Adidas Originals has used Young Thug as

a prominent face in their campaign that promotes being yourself and pushing the

envelope. Calvin Klein has also taken advantage of the

gender-bending artist by having him model clothing from

their Fall 2016 women’s collection for their #MyCalvins

campaign. The campaign features Thug in various clothes

from dresses to shiny gold pants in addition to the various

taglines that read things along the lines of “I disobey in

#mycalvins” and “I am not who you think I am in

#mycalvins.” This campaign comes on the heels of Jaden

Smith being introduced as the face of Louis Vuitton’s Spring 2016 women’s wear

campaign. Perhaps this is the start of something big.

Conclusion

At a time where hatred is running rampant, a counter-culture of self-

expressive youth has formed to combat these issues. Young Thug toes the blurry

gray lines of gender, taking with him anyone who will listen. A combination of

warbly, autotuned falsettos and women’s clothing with painted nails, Young Thug is

begging people to be themselves without saying a word. He is quickly changing

perceptions of the hip-hop community as well as changing the community itself.

What was once a place of hatred and homophobia is now becoming a place of

acceptance of uniqueness. Rappers are beginning to feel more comfortable in their

own skin with Young Thug wearing women’s clothing, Lil Uzi Vert embracing his

inner goth, and nearly every single other rapper now wearing almost exclusively

high fashion designers. While rappers have always cared about what they look like,

it wasn’t until recently that they wanted to look good. Right in the middle of this

genre defining transformation? Young Thug.