Young Thug’s Debut UK Show Was Weird, but Amazing, but Weird Also

​Photo via Instagram.

This article originally appeared on Noisey UK.

We found ourselves in the O2 Academy Islington, an 800 capacity venue, waiting for Young Thug’s debut London show. Outside we had passed tout after tout, none of them selling, all eagerly asking, “Have you got any tickets to sell?” Everyone wanted to be inside here tonight—shoulders hunched, pressed up against each other, among the growing smell of lit joints and sweat, waiting for Thugger.

The weird thing about Young Thug—and there are a few weird things about Young Thug—is the sense that as much as everyone was waiting for a gassed hip-hop show, they were also just waiting to see something happen. Good, bad, or strange, the feeling was that just seeing this 23 year old from Atlanta in the flesh was an event in itself. Everything about him—his image, his muted interview responses, his inimitable garbled flow, and the high profile incidents he has recently been entangled in—have contributed to making him somewhat of a rap anti-hero, as iconic as he is unpredictable.

So, beginning to end, here’s what happened, when Jeffrey Lamar Williams came to a stuffy O2 academy in Islington that normally hosts god awful indie club nights.

Kudos to Semtex for holding the attention of a crowd waiting and waiting for Thugger to arrive, keeping the mood up with *bangers*. That being said, he quickly discovered that dropping Meek Mill is now a total no-go. No more than a few bars into “Check,” boos began rising up. As more and more people worked out what was going on, the booing got louder and louder. Eventually Semtex pulled the track out and took to the mic, “You people are cold”.

We’ve been banging on J Hus for a minute. His 15th Day Mixtape is, as far as we’re concerned one of the best to drop this year. So it was next level good shit to watch him slay in support of Thug. The love he was getting from the crowd showcased just how fast his popularity is spreading, and just how promising his game is.

My Hero #youngthug #dannyglover

A video posted by cassavetti (@cassavetti) on Aug 28, 2015 at 4:20am PDT

And so, after a wait that probably wasn’t as long as it felt, Thugger arrived. Wearing a weird pink shirt thing that looked like the sort of Fat Face fleece your Dad wears on holiday in Cornwall—complete with sunglasses and a sunhat—he somehow made an outfit that looked like it had been picked out in the dark look God-level. As he sings on “Halftime”: “Every time I dress myself it goes motherfuckin’ viral.” He didn’t let us down.

#youngthug #energy #london

A video posted by @darker_s on Aug 28, 2015 at 3:58am PDT

It can be hard, in the melee of mixtapes, one off releases, and drip-fed collaborations, to stay on top of the modern rapper’s arsenal of tracks. It’s the same of Young Thug. There’s over ten tapes to pick from, the Rich Gang work with Birdman and Rich Homie Quan, this year’s Barter 6, not to mention singles dropped out of nowhere all over the place. Yet, if his live show proved one thing, it’s that over the past four years releasing music, Thug has built up a stronghold of unbelievable heat. “Danny Glover,” “With That”, “2 Cups Stuffed”, “Hookah”, and “Imma Ride”—the hit rate was relentless. With every track yelled back from the crowd, word for word, there was something invincible about the setlist. Every second was a healthy dose of real talk for anyone who thinks Young Thug’s strain of hip-hop lacks longevity. His first visit to the UK was long overdue: This was some legacy shit.

A video posted by Angus Harrison (@a_n_g_u_s) on Aug 28, 2015 at 7:55am PDT

Earlier this month Jamie XX played an tiny Boiler Room set in New York, and everyone was knocked out when Thug popped up out of nowhere to perform their slammer “Good Times” from In Colour. Well, we didn’t quite get Jamie XX on stage, but after calling, “Who here knows Jamie X? Make some noise for Jamie X,” Thug launched into a fire run through of "Good Times"—solidifying its #soundofthesummer2015 status even further. Although this did raise the question: Who is Jamie X? Maybe he's like Jamie XX but one size smaller.

Yes, we were gassed to here cuts from Barter 6, and maybe even some new music, but we can’t front: When Thug asked us to raise our lighters and torches to the sky, we guessed what might be coming. After a slightly confusing introduction about fathers, and grandfathers, and ancestors, or something, he leapt into “Lifestyle.” It is, undoubtedly, a straight up anthem of modern times, and Thug knows it. Leaping from corner to corner of the stage, the swaying and bobbing crowd in the palm of his hands, it was probably the moment the whole evening made the most sense.

Totally expected but a bit of a disappointment nonetheless. The early sounds he broke through with, the softer more psychedelic melodies of Barter, and even the pop-centric turn with Jamie X, were all showcased, but it would have been full circle to have heard the gospel fury of “Pacifier,” especially looking forward to the release of Hy!£UN35.

Photo via Instagram.

Filing out at the end, we basically had two things to deal with. We had experienced a moment, for sure. An artist pushing hip-hop into bizarre new territories. Yet, as a performance in a stricter sense, was it actually any good? Thug raps over full versions of his songs, with his vocals turned up, so half the time you can’t tell whether it is him or the backing. When he is rapping, it is often off-kilter, varying in volume and pace erratically. Then there’s the fact he only played for around 40 minutes.

Yet to worry about all this shit is missing the point. You’ve got his music on your iTunes if you want to listen to it sounding “good.” This is myth over method—a schooling in how to fill a room before you’ve even stepped on stage. Like any good rock star, Young Thug presents a kind of pregnant energy. If we had one takeaway from his debut London show, it’s that spectacle is in Thug’s DNA. He can and will do whatever he wants from here, because he is completely impossible to ignore, possessing an innate power to throw a crowd into a frenzy just by standing there. It’s telling one of the night's biggest moments in fact came 20 minutes before the show began, when Semtex took to the mic simply to announce: “Young Thug is in the building.”

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