ANGELA WEISS / AFP
Rapper Young Thug (here at a fashion show in late 2018) pleaded guilty to gang involvement; he was able to get out of prison.
UNITED STATES – When a music label actually hides a gang with a report at its head. American artist Young Thug recognized Thursday October 31 his involvement in a criminal group. At the end of this procedure, the man called Jeffery Lamar Williams was able to leave prison where he had been since his arrest in May 2022.
The rapper was released after pleading guilty in a court in Atlanta, Georgia’s capital, to six charges, including possession of drugs and firearms and engaging in organized criminal activity. According to the New York Timeshe was sentenced to 15 years of probation in addition to the time already spent behind bars.
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”declared prosecutor Adriane Love during her opening argument, on November 23, 2023.
Young Thug’s songs evidence
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.
The trial of Young Thug, a 33-year-old avant-garde rap figure from Atlanta, 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 solve the matter, we solved the matter and we found the words”had put the prosecutor into perspective. 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 “future Lil Wayne” stopped in his tracks
The arrest in May 2022 of the interpreter of Best Friend, Hot Or Checkcrowned with a Grammy Award in 2019 as co-writer of song of the year, This is Americahad been a shock to the influential Atlanta 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 “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.
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