Young Thug's Barter 6

I'm gonna be honest: I listened to this album more than I want to admit when it came out in 2015.

And when I say I'm being honest, I'm saying that I'm being honest to myself. I think I wanted to deny to myself how much I admired "Barter 6". I mean, let's write out the lyrics of an arbitrary song - "Dream", why not:

This that rich shit, I eat fish and grits, catch me boolin' with my dogs, just like Michael Vick, I don't give no damn if they throw it off, I won't fucking miss, Bitch I'm so up, no Sleepy Brown, wouldn't talk to him about shit.

For someone who admires lyricism, it's embarassing for me to put this music on a pedestal, mostly because you just want to ask Thug ... what the fuck are you talking about? You couldn't even call this stream-of-consciousness; it's the slop skimming off of his brain.

But ... that's why I like it. In the same way there's nothing remarkable about Ol' Dirty Bastard's songwriting, you could say everything about Young Thug's music lays in how he sings - and he is, indeed, singing. If rapping is the province of storytelling, then Young Thug is singing - he is trying to paint scenes that only take the semblance of reality when he so desires them to.

Let's take another cringe-y, really fucking stupid set of verses from "Check":

Yeah, they all wanna greet him, they pull down his pants and they wanna eat 'em,
They won't tease on that dick, they won't read on that dick, they won't leash on that dick,
no Felicia that dick, Mamacita that dick, they gon' snitch on that dick,
and she screamin' loud, she can't secret that dick,

So...OK. Is this real? I imagine most people would identify it as it is: it is Young Thug embellishing the ... let's say powers of his penis, to what to us is an absurd degree and what to Thug is unknown. This is fantasy. This is probably, in a "Yeezus" (2013) way, the emanations of some pornographic addiction, but it's still a fantasy, a set of surreal images. And ... I can't help but admire the strange and twisted effect they conjure, even if Thug himself doesn't understand it.

Let's continue with another verse with sexual imagery, "With That":

Yes you not cool, no you not, boo, I don't give no damn, I'm not calling you boo, my bitch she a jewel, (I swear to God when I was younger I thought he said "jew") you can't prove a point, but you know you so doomed, you know you so doomed, I swear I'm so lost with no clue, don't know what to do,
Overload, overload, I overload on these niggas, ain't know how to milk these cows,
She make that dick grow, now it's big like a tower, yow, front pockets filled up with bands, no Bible.

The first verse is like 4chan shitposting. It's so stupid. But it somehow has the humor and rhythm of someone who just really enjoys trolling. Then, the song changes demeanor in the second verse, with Thug, along with the alluded "overload", drawing out the delivery of his lines, in the same way the unidentified woman draws his ... penis out, such that it is as big as a tower. Where Future may talk about taking lots of codeine, it literally feels like Thug is on drugs, his speech slurring and the images coming to his mind becoming more surreal.

What makes Young Thug's music great is how he delivers the lines - even in this milieu where rap has been irrevocably blurred with R&B, it's actually quite challenging to call him a rapper; to him, rapping is but one tool that goes into his overall skillset of singing. Thug croons, Thug mutters, Thug shrieks, and Thug, actually, carries a tune, not in "Barter 6" though. Luckily, even though Thug can't write to save his life, he has his vocal style.

So let's end this brief discussion with opener "Constantly Hating", the best song on "Barter 6" and maybe the most ambitious song, in a sense, I've heard from him. Thug has made innumerable moves toward pop, some with incredible success in my eyes, showcasing his versatility as an artist, but I think "Constantly Hating" is his most cinematic, big-picture song ever. That it begins with relative silence - the synth sounds like rumbling thunder, while Thug is driven in a dark limo at night - and Thug whispering, "Pull that shit up, fool; it's ours", shows how introspective he is here, which he is almost never. He then roars, "Hopped out my mothafuckin' bed, / hopped in the mothafuckin' coupe" which, years later, matches the ebullience of the line from "What's The Move" (2019): "I jumped off the porch and went straight up, girl, / you can leave your town and head to another world." That's Young Thug in a nutshell: other artists need to argue about their success, showing their lack of confidence, other artists hate their success, but Thug just shows up; it suffices for him to show up, it's more important if we as an audience are ready to receive him.

And, I would be remiss if I did not end with a final sexually charged verse from "Barter 6":

But really what is a nigga to do when the whole world constantly hating on you, pussy niggas hold they nuts, masturbating on you, meanwhile the fucking federal baiting on you (hmm),

with Thug inflecting "whole world" emotionally, almost with a kind of contempt and vulnerability from being so hated. And that's Thugger: he's human, in a Frank Sinatra way. (It's a shame he did what he did, but it's admittedly hard hearing some of the lyrics in his songs and not thinking, "Hmm, he doth protest too much".)

Anyway, I'm not going to talk about "Barter 6" in length. The first four songs are strong and retain that nightmarish quality but the remainder of the album is same-y and not as energetic. Thug, as the years pass, would develop his artistic powers greatly after "Barter 6"; he would come to understand the range of his voice and his vision, culminating in "So Much Fun" (2019) and before he would be embroiled with his RICO charges (and which he would ultimately be judged guilty for).

And yet I am touching on Thug briefly as I am reflecting on the albums I've enjoyed in chronological order, and I'm re-evaluating what I had thought was my best album of 2015 (HIGH RISK's self titled electronic-jazz album). I was pretty close to giving it up to "Barter 6" before entering the album's 2/3.

Digging through 2015's catalog, I realized this was a breakout year for rap. I really don't want to talk about "To Pimp a Butterfly"; I've probably thrown shade on it countless times in this blog, likely in a churlish way. I just think it's excessive. If we ignore "To Pimp a Butterfly" - and I think we should, not because I think it's bad, but because it's so singular it's difficult to find neighbors for it - then we see a year of particularly dark and yet vivid albums: Young Thug's "Barter 6" of course, Earl Sweatshirt's "I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside", Vince Staples' "Summertime '06", Future's "DS2" and Death Grips' "The Powers That B" which can be split into "Niggas on the Moon" and "Jenny Death". It wasn't until I paused on "Barter 6" that I remembered all of these albums, which had a strong hand in coloring my 2015 and which I had, somehow, completely forgotten.

And I'm seriously not trying to knock on Kendrick, but, though you could argue that some of these albums are inspired from "good kid, m.A.A.d city", "m.A.A.d city" is ornate in construction; these albums are brutal and sparse. They form an interesting picture of rap's evolution. If you look particularly at Young Thug, Future and MC Ride, they form a triptych of Ol' Dirty's legacy.

I prefer this picture of 2015, over "To Pimp a Butterfly". As I listen to "DS2", appreciating it far more than I ever had in my life, there's something about Future's hell in 2015 presaging the succeeding ten years. We recoiled from the darkness of these albums at the time because there was something of the truth in them, in comparison to the reactive optimism of "Butterfly" (okay I'll stop, I don't really want to be a Kendrick hater).

I find it really funny "Barter 6" came out on my birthday, by the way. "Barter 6" and Fiona Apple's "Fetch the Bolt Cutters". Weird combo.