The brand-new Barter 6 is a step further: It’s a mood piece, a confident low-key churn that luxuriates in vibe rather than songcraft. It’s Thug’s first proper commercially available album, but like If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, the new one from Thug’s sort-of I-guess labelmate Drake, it’s content to dial in on a specific mental state, staying there and letting its sound breathe. And like Drake, Thug is taking that weird side route of claiming that this up-for-purchase-on-iTunes album is really a mixtape, that the actual album is coming later. Maybe that’s a cop-out, a way of preventing himself from entirely standing behind this thing that he just made. But whatever purpose it’s supposed to serve in Thug’s greater career arc, Barter 6 works as a beautiful descent into a uniquely psychedelic headspace. Thug has made the full-on rap-star leap here, and he’s done it without losing one iota of the weirdness that made him interesting in the first place. Thug is a controversial figure in rap for reasons that go far beyond his amazingly peacocky sartorial decisions. ![]() People will say that Thug doesn’t rap about anything, or that you can’t even understand what he’s saying. ![]() Both are, at least at times, completely true. Thug’s subject matter is money and drugs and sex and killing you and clothes and drugs again - nothing revolutionary.
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