Ricocheting off the beat from a million angles.
Much has been made of Young Thug‘s chosen alias: Is the rapper’s handle ironic, sincere, or simply the first face-palm-obvious thing that popped into 22-year-old Jeffrey Williams’s head? The name is just one piece of the puzzle that makes up the breakout Atlanta star, whose off-the-wall squawk has laced many of the biggest rap anthems of the past two years, cleaving hiphop fandom down the middle in the process.
His voice is the first thing that lets you know Thug’s far from generic, and one can’t discuss the man without talking about it. For rap heads, the clearest precedent is Lil Wayne during his robo-tripping Auto-Tune phase, with a bit of the pained paranoia of vintage Dizzee Rascal and some old-school Jamaican toasting thrown in…