Young Thug Projects Worth Listening to and Those You Need to Skip

Fan or not, Young Thug is easily going down as one of the most important artists of this generation.

You might not realize, but with almost a decade in the game, Thug has a pretty deep catalog. His first mixtape, I Came From Nothing, dropped at the halfway mark in 2011, and gave a small preview of his potential to become one of the biggest artists in rap. Early on, he committed himself to becoming a phenomenon that sounded nothing like anyone that came before him. Of course, he had to fail a few times to start winning, but he got things right in the mid 2010s by finessing a transcendent sound that was based on high-pitched tones, extraterrestrial flows and jumbled bars that only made sense after you thought about them more.

His divergence led to a bulletproof confidence and furthermore resulted in some of the most memorable projects of the last decade—Slime Season, Rich Gang: Tha Tour Pt. 1 with Rich Homie Quan, and Beautiful Thugger Girls are standout examples. With an infinite ability to keep his fans guessing what was coming next, the 29-year-old rapper morphed into a superstar with a discography of disparate mixtapes and songs to back his elevated status. Though he thrived in the streets, becoming one of the best in Atlanta, he also cracked the commercial realm with his mixtape Barter 6 in 2015, the compilation album Slime Language in 2018, and his debut album, So Much Fun, released last summer. He really does get better with each drop, allowing his skips to now be overshadowed for the most part. But we'll still discuss them later on.

Now with over 20 projects and neary 10 years in the game, Thug's legendary sound is colored all over his rap history. There are efforts that are widely deemed to be classics and some that are far less remarkable to what we’ve come to expect from him. So today, XXL makes things easier by giving y’all a cheat sheet to his catalog. Peep Young Thug's projects worth listening to and those you need to skip below.