Young Thug's "I'm Up" Is The Woke Album We Didn't Know We Had
Hear Me Out....
Young Thug is an enigma. He’s mythical, misunderstood, meticulous. His meticulousness is what’s most lost in translation. The thoughtfulness that he puts into his content goes extremely unnoticed. “All of my music is serious,” Thug told Big Boy. “I take my time with everything.”
Throughout his discography, Thug has constantly created slyly conceptual projects. Alex Tumay, Young Thug’s engineer, told The Fader that “Thug has a plan. For each and every song he's like, 'This is what I think this song should be on.' He'll be talking about albums four years in the future. I'm like, what do you mean this is going to be track four on this album? But he's often 100 percent dead on."
Barter 6 was a tribute to his idol Lil Wayne, Beautiful Thugger Girls was his genre-bending ”singing” album, and On The Run, well, that one’s self-explanatory. On Jeffery, every song is titled after someone, like Swizz Beatz or Elton John. Even more, the songs reference the aforementioned person in some obscure way, whether it’s singing “put in work, put in work” on Rih Rih or going ape shit on Harambe.
When Thug talked to T.I about “So Much Fun” he described the album as “on task” and “simple.” It was what he knew the listeners would want to hear. He even told him that Punk, Thug’s next solo project, will be “real rap.”
And “I’m Up” was his “woke” album. For Thug, “I’m Up” is synonymous with “I’m woke.” On the animated album cover, Thug's hands hold up a melting earth while a winged cartoon version of himself flies over it all. Be clear, this is not KOD or Damn. Because Young Thug’s not J. Cole or Kendrick Lamar. He’s Young Thug. This is done the Thugger way: tongue-in-cheek, abstract, covertly methodical.
Regardless, this album showcases Young Thug’s morals and perspectives on serious topics in a non-preachy, entertaining way; so entertaining that the seriousness could be--and was--easily overlooked. Pitchfork described the album by saying “if there's any central message, it seems to be ‘honor those you love and those you've lost.’” The project goes even further than that. On this album Young Thug addresses socially relevant topics like sticking together, stopping violence, doing it for “your people”, and having self-love.
Songs like “My Boys'' and “Family” shows the value of family, friendship, and love. While “King Troup,” continues Pitchfork’s theme of “honoring those you love and lost” by paying tribute to his slain friend Keith B. Troup, Thug pushes beyond that sentiment as he raps about the justice system: “Lil Roscoe, he sleep where it's nasty, they could've freed him ‘cause he grew up with no daddy, but instead, they took advantage and did him badly” and called for people to stop killing each other--something he does multiple times on the album: ”Stop it, stop the killin', we can get millions, we together, get the cheddar.”
These “woke” stances bleed over to “For My People” as he raps “I put it down for my people, ready to die for my people, We multiply with the people, have a shootout for my people” before rapping “Farrakhan me, I'm a leader.” The video shows exactly who Thug’s “people” are, as groups of people march down the street with weapons dressed reminiscently to black panthers, raising their fists, and we even see Thug dancing around with colored tear gas.
When thinking about this seemingly absurd concept through with a friend, he challenged me about the song “Special.” I didn’t have an answer for him until I listened to the song months later and had a revelation: Special--and Hercules--are about having pride in yourself. Chanting “I feel special, I feel special” almost becomes a mantra. It’s uplifting. You can’t listen to it and not feel special. Try it?
This doesn’t feel like reaching. These things don’t feel incidental. It’s too many coincidences. It’s too easy to misunderstand the misunderstood, and who’s been more misunderstood than Young Thug over this past decade? In his interview with Clique, which was around the time that I’m Up was released, Thug told the interviewer, “I hope they understand me before the next motherfucker that looks up to me--they understand him because he can express it better, and make them feel like he started it or he did it or he’s the founder, but I’m the founder.”
Don’t worry, Thugger, I’m here to help them understand.