American rapper Young Thug was released Thursday after pleading guilty to gang involvement, ending nearly two years of a sprawling organized crime trial punctuated by theatrics. Real name Jeffery Lamar Williams, the 33-year-old artist has been released, public documents from the prison system in the state of Georgia (southeast) show.
According to the New York Times, he was sentenced to 15 years of probation in addition to time served since his arrest in May 2022. The rapper was released after pleading guilty in a court in the capital Atlanta of Georgia, on six counts, including possession of drugs and firearms and engaging in organized criminal activity.
“Bloods” gang
According to the prosecution, Young Thug's label, “Young Stoner Life Records”, was only a front for a branch of the “Bloods” gang identified as “Young Slime Life”, or YSL, involved in murders, drug trafficking and violent car thefts, of which the rapper was the leader. “The evidence will show you that YSL checks all the boxes of a criminal street gang,” prosecutor Adriane Love said during her opening argument on November 23, 2023.
This interminable trial was punctuated by dramatic events. Judge Ural Glanville, who presided over a 10-month jury selection and then eight months of proceedings, had to recuse himself in July for arranging a meeting with prosecutors and a key witness, without informing all parties. He was replaced by another magistrate, Paige Reese Whitaker.
The trial of Young Thug, an avant-garde figure in Atlanta rap, was also marred by controversy. Prosecutors considered, as evidence of criminal acts, excerpts from songs by several artists, including Young Thug, a practice accused of being racist and an attack on artistic freedom by supporters of freedom of expression and professionals in the sector . “We did not look for the words to resolve the case, we resolved the case and we found the words,” the prosecutor put things into perspective.
Lyrics controversy
Adriane Love had read verses from the song “Take it to trial”, and highlighted their “disturbing resemblance to very true, very real, and very specific events”. Young Thug's lawyers sought to exclude those lyrics from the exhibits, saying the use of verses could unfairly influence jurors.
The arrest in May 2022 of the singer of “Best Friend”, “Hot” or “Check”, crowned with a Grammy Award in 2019 as co-author of the “best song” of the year, “This is America,” had been a shock to Atlanta’s influential hip-hop scene. He was charged among 28 other people accused of belonging to the gang.
Born on August 16, 1991, Young Thug grew up in a poor suburb of Atlanta, this city in the southeast of the United States, which has become the nerve center of rap in recent years. As a teenager, he already imagined himself as the “future Lil Wayne”, another rap star from the southern United States, whom he idolized before becoming one of his friends, then one of his rivals. With his confusing rhymes and scrambled words, he stands out as one of the most emblematic representatives of the trap movement.
Young Thug has collaborated with the biggest names in rap and pop, from Drake to Travis Scott, including Dua Lipa, Justin Bieber and Elton John.
