His singing makes the most sense standing alone, and at times, he’s charmingly offbeat - in the manner of his rapping, but with a tender streak - resulting in a warm track like “Numbers.”

Thug doesn’t mesh with hired hook-men - his odd, squeaking-door of a voice can’t spark with the frictionless style favored by many of today’s crooners. “Amazing” even goes so far as to pull in the artist Jaquees for a strangely conventional R&B lyric, boxing the track into a radio-favored MC-on-verse, singer-on-chorus format. Young Thug ‘Would Never Buy’ A Jay Z Album Because of Age “Givenchy” committed fully to the form, with the rapper moaning about love and confessing “I put my heart inside your pocket.” Barter 6‘s first track and its final three - the opening and closing statements - feature a lot of singing, often augmented with overdubbed backing choruses of his whimpers and wails. This should not come as a surprise: “Lifestyle” was close to a ballad. Thug matches the feel of the instrumentals, singing more than ever before. “With That” verges on operatic, and “Numbers” opens with clear piano, pretty backing vocals, and a crack of thunder, as if it’s a piece of Quiet Storm R&B from 1982.

(There’s nothing here like “Flava,” a daring piece of Nth-wave G-funk that should have been a hit as big as “Lifestyle.”) Many of the songs involve repeating keyboard riffs, stern and plangent. Barter 6‘s beats are consistent but less frenetic compared to tracks from past Thug releases - lower variance but also lower mean. Instead, this album offers cohesion and unity, though maybe at the expense of the exciting, what-will-happen next feel of past mixtapes. 1, with Rich Homie Quan and Birdman, arrived last September, the Thug/Quan collaboration “Lifestyle” was well on its way to being a hit.īarter 6 does not have a comparable entry point. When Black Portland, Thug’s mixtape with Bloody Jay, came out in January 2014, the remarkable “Danny Glover” was already making its rounds on the Internet. More importantly, this project arrives without a buzz-building single. First, Thug was forced to change this project’s name at the last moment thanks to a threat of legal action by Lil Wayne, who was not amused when Thug titled it Carter 6, tipping to Wayne’s much-delayed Tha Carter V. Young Thug: A Case for the Rising Rapper (Op-Ed)īarter 6 is a mixtape (though it’s on sale via iTunes), and it arrives in a different manner than his last two notable full-lengths.

Young thug barter 6