In a landscape where Gucci Mane and Waka Flocka Flame have proven to be, at the very least, reliable dispensers of either captivating displays of slurry brilliance and/or music that makes you want to slam your hand through a cinder block, Brick Squad's own Young Thug stands out as an unquantifiable wild card. His style-- which marries the hook-bending sonic sensibility of Future, the pill-addled yawp of Danny Brown, and the playful irreverance of Lil B living together under the guiding aura of Lil Wayne's experimental period-- is hard to define, and he uses this mystique in memorable ways. But, more often than not, he doesn't quite put that enticing package together. David Drake called Thug's 2012 mixtape I Came From Nothing 3 a "a dense, ambitious attempt to cultivate an entirely new rap style" while also calling it "frequently frustrating, shifting from eye-openingly original to inconsequential from track to track." Much of the same can be said about Thug's newest entry, 1017 Thug.
If it weren't for the moments Thug does puts the puzzle together, 1017 Thug could be easily dismissed as an erratic experiment-- many songs never get started and don't stick, and the ones that do get something spinning sometimes don't end up anywhere memorable. The thing is though, when Thug finds the right balance, it makes for some of the best and most fun-loving rap of the year, songs with multiple entry points that can't help but splatter and seep into the corners of your brain. Three songs, in particular, take you to these dizzying highs, "2 Cups Stuffed", "Nigeria", and "Picacho". That trio of tracks is essentially a crash course in what constitutes a brilliant, potential-flexing entry from Thug, especially when couched between more phoned-in thought bubbles like "Condo Music" and messy, meandering joints like "Shooting Star".
"2 Cups Stuffed" is without a doubt 1017 Thug's Wake-The-Fuck-Up moment, a song that builds from an unshakeable, wheeling hook into Thug's chanting, delirious demand for syrup. "Uno! Dos! Cups stuffed! UNO! DOS! CUPS STUFFED!" It's repetitive in the way that a hammer's thud might be repetitive. It's great.
Following up the annoying-by-design "Murder" is "Nigeria", a watery, Gucci-featuring track that sounds like Thug is calling from the corner of the club, maybe even the bathroom stall, maybe underwater. "Nigeria", an ode to the potent Nigerian strain of marijuana, gives Thug license to travel around the globe, to Jamaica, to Siberia ("Also cold in Siberia," Thug shivers). It's a good example of the tension Thug creates, batting the trope around in a playful way, while at the same time seeming a little dangerous and unhinged, adrift in the fog of drugs and his nasal fiending is the only thing cutting through the mist. It's something else.
Curious synths provided by producer Jay Neutron lead you into the bizarro universe of "Picacho", a pastiche where Young Thug envisions walking up to peers in the club and bellowing "Pikachu!," maybe even while wearing that red ballcap Ash wears. It takes its title from either the most well-known Pokémon, a cat/rat mixture that doubles as a tesla coil, or from the phenomenon of mixing up yellow-colored cough syrup with the more common purple-colored stuff. I'm not sure it matters.
"Picacho" is a good example of just how far Thug will stretch his voice and cadence, sometimes even leaping into a register that Mel Blanc didn't know existed. It's probably the best thing on the mixtape. It's pretty incredible.
One of the strangest things about 1017 Thug is just how flat the more high-visibility collaborations fall; none of the tracks produced by Brick Squad load carriers Lex Luger or 808 Mafia leave a mark, and even Gucci's appearance on the standout "Nigeria" proves that he and Thug aren't exactly cut from the same patterned leather. 1017 Thug, at its height, excites the imagination; if Thug can sensibly pour these influences and touchpoints into songs like "Picacho" and "2 Cups Stuffed", can radio omnipresence be that far behind? It might take more mixtapes than it should to find out.
