Young Thug’s melodic delivery has been his calling card for roughly 15 years. Now he says he’s going all the way, and he has a very specific blueprint: Mary J. Blige.
On the Tuesday (Oct. 6) episode of The Crew Has It, the podcast hosted by Power actors Kris D. Lofton and Gianni Paolo, Thug said an untitled R&B album is coming “this year.” The episode was taped backstage at ComplexCon in Los Angeles.
I’m going Mary J. I’m going real R&B. Most of the songs are sexual though.
Young Thug, Billboard
Don’t expect a breakup record. He figures there are probably “two or three heartbreak songs” on it, and he credited the mood to his fiancée, the R&B singer Mariah the Scientist. He’s been “super in love,” he explained, so the tears can wait: “I ain't making that many heartbreak songs in an R&B album ‘cause we’re having fun right now.” When Paolo offered to connect him with Blige, he jumped at it, though Complex notes the two have met before.
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It isn’t a total left turn. His 2017 mixtape Beautiful Thugger Girls tested R&B, with some country in the mix, and peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard 200, and in 2020 he made the trap-meets-R&B tape Slime & B with Chris Brown. But a full album built on Blige’s template would be his most committed move into the genre yet. It would also be his first solo release since UY SCUTI, which debuted at No. 6 on the Billboard 200 last September.
Watch the full conversation below. The album talk starts around the 23-minute mark.
Then there’s the Drake stash. Thug hinted that some of the songs the two have recorded will come out, including “What a Time to Be a Slime,” a collaboration that leaked in 2020. “We got a few songs,” he said, adding: “We finna drop. We finna do what we gotta do.”
Nothing has been announced, but the history is long. The pair have shared the Hot 100-topping “Way 2 Sexy,” “Sacrifices” and “Ice Melts,” and Drake appeared on two songs from Thug’s 2023 album Business Is Business: the intro, “Parade on Cleveland,” and “Oh U Went.” Drake later turned up in the video for “Oh U Went,” made while Thug was in jail awaiting his RICO trial.
There’s no title, date or tracklist for the R&B album yet. Before any of it arrives, Thug and his YSL labelmates take the New Generation Tour to Europe later this month.
