Georgia’s Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis spent over two years trying and failing to conflate YSL (Young Stoner Life) Records with a street gang. Willis, who cut her teeth wielding the state’s racketeering laws to prosecute schoolteachers, claimed (often through the use of lyrics, social media captions, and tattoos) that YSL was a front for “Young Slime Life,” a gang associated with the Bloods. She alleged a violent conspiracy that indicted 28 co-defendants, including YSL artists Gunna, Yak Gotti, and Duke, along with label head Young Thug, but failed to win convictions on the most serious charges. Still, Willis claims an “amazing” job done—an understandable position if you consider the stipulations of Thug’s freedom: 15 years of probation, a 10-year ban from Atlanta city limits, and a tarnished brand.
The video for “Money on Money,” Young Thug’s first single post-RICO trial, opened with an image of the former YSL logo going up in flames. No longer on good terms (or legally allowed to communicate) with many of YSL’s foundational artists, and presumably still mourning the loss of his protégé, Lil Keed (who tragically passed from health complications in 2022, shortly into Thug’s 30-month prison stint), it would’ve been understandable if Thug had retreated from the spotlight, guard up. His comeback album, last year’s UY SCUTI, was an uneven mess that lost its best ideas to the bigger moment. But how to find the creative freedom to do your best work on the other side of a trial that misappropriated lyrics from not just your biggest hits, but your leaked music? The answer for Thug, it turns out, is to pay it forward.
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Slime Language 3 is the third installment of Young Thug’s label compilation series, a gargantuan collection of songs—packaged into a mosh-pit leaning “Side A,” made to be heard while hitting whippets at a Cole Bennett festival, and a more whimsical “Side B,” made to be sung in the shower—that ushers in a new generation of YSL acolytes. Measured by its highs, it’s an undeniable blast, a natural expansion of Thug’s world. It’s also a 41-song party album for a party that logically should’ve ended a while ago, though it does a remarkably good job at convincing you to be present with it.
Promoting Slime Language 2 back in 2021, Young Thug went on the Million Dollaz Worth of Game podcast and claimed Lil Wayne didn’t even dap him up the first time they met. This, the story goes, inspired Thug’s personal vow never to slight another artist the way his idol slighted him. Even if you don’t buy his dramatization of events, you can tell this encounter left a mark. With last fall’s signing of Tezzus and diamond*, the brash and flamboyant co-founders of Atlanta rap collective ØWay (a handful of whom—Sk8star, Pz’, Lil Righteous—show out on this album), Thug is doing for others while finding a way to maintain his presence in Atlanta from a distance. As when his onetime mentor Gucci Mane opened up the Brick Squad sessions to YSL, MPA, and Migos members, Thug is widening his circle with what appears to be an open-door policy for new talent.