“I ain’t listen to gangsta music, like, I ain’t really care for it. Only gangsta music I listened to was like 21 Savage,” diamond* told KidsTakeOver in a December 2025 interview alongside his musical partner, Tezzus—the most promising of Young Thug’s mentees and the founder of the ØWAY collective–who he described as once rapping "about sh*t that was there" knows about. The Ø represents being “against oppression,” a broader claim about creatives rather than a political one. But that, in and of itself, is quite ironic when they’re part of Young Thug’s latest iteration of the YSL brand in the aftermath of the YSL RICO trial.
Building his label now has become a ground-up operation, especially after falling out with other members of YSL who took the stand and under conditions that prevent him from being in contact with those who didn’t. Then there’s the fact that the most successful protégé under Thug copped an Alford Plea, admitting to a court that YSL is a gang. Thug is forbidden from promoting gang-related content as part of his conditions, so the very idea of having to rep YSL as a record label becomes quite dicey.
With Gunna gone and Lil Baby effectively a distant affiliate of the label, Young Thug had a few hurdles in his return to his music career. When your influence has also transformed a generation of rappers, it places your own artistry into an identity crisis: what can Young Thug rap about if not what he lives? And who does he align with when he can’t even be in contact with certain artists who were signed to YSL?
The version of YSL found on the third installment in the Slime Language series largely relies on ØWAY’s mass appeal, the momentum they’ve built over the course of the past year, and the state of youth culture today. The thing is that YSL, in its previous form, didn’t solely rely on artists that were exclusively signed to Young Thug—artists like Lil Gotit were never formally signed to Young Thug but became close affiliates of YSL. Even Slimelife Shawty, who took a plea deal in the RICO case, was never actually signed to the label. With that said, Slime Language 3 turned into the opportunity to reconstruct the label after the government accused it of doubling as an organized crime syndicate.
Slime Language 3 is ultimately driven by the current state of youth culture, and yet, its fault is that it’s an incredibly bloated two-disc project. There are highlights, sure, though very few moments that reflect what made Young Thug a groundbreaking cultural shaker when he first emerged. But his influence remains unshakeable among the new generation, almost mirroring the free-associative influence Lil Wayne had on him. It’s most evident when you view how the rage sound ties back to trap music.
Young Thug’s imprint has always been clear among the artists that he brought under his wing. And Gunna becomes the perfect case study of the structure of YSL’s functionality as a label. His ascent is perfectly documented in the Slime Language series. He featured on four of the 15 songs in the first installment. Slime Language 2 credits it as a joint venture between Young Thug and Gunna under the YSL umbrella. It became a sprawling effort that put Thugger’s tastemaking at the fore with Gunna riding shotgun.
But with the fallout from the YSL trial, Slime Language 3 tries to piece together what was left of the label. Gunna’s no longer around, nor are other signees or affiliates—some due to conditions, others because they folded. The outcome hasn’t been favorable among Thug’s die-hards, who themselves are trying to reconcile the version of him that they once fell in love with and the current version who’s still searching for his footing. UY SCUTI hardly helped in that regard, while Thug more or less acts like a host for the new artists he’s introducing on Slime Language 3.
Ultimately, the crux of Slime Language 3 is that it attempts to bridge the gap between the underground and mainstream audiences. Tezzus and diamond* already stamped their name with UY SCUTI BOYZ as their debut on YSL. YSL, the label, currently boasts Strick, T-Shyne, Yung Kayo, Tezzus, diamond*, 1300SAINT, and Iyrus as its official signees. It's not like these artists are censoring themselves on Thugger's behalf–there's still some cartoonishly violent references across the project from various artists. But in the same breath, the appeal doesn't necessarily need to emphasize gang references as outwardly. That’s crucial when aligning with creative, fashion-forward rappers.
Slime Language 3 is a compilation, after all, so it’s not necessarily fair to view it as something that required the utmost cohesion to pull off in the first place. There are plenty of stellar moments across the board—Quavo sounds rejuvenated and inspired, while Biggs Money’s husky voice commands any song that he’s on. “Eaters” ft. Travis Scott, Future, and Tezzus feels like the rage-forward banger that almost has a generational handoff quality to it. Tezzus and diamond*, specifically, sound primed on this project for this next chapter of their careers under Young Thug’s mentorship.
The new version of YSL seeks to abandon the mythology that established it from the jump. Street infamy met the art in a way that felt equally left-field to trap as it preserved its essence and pushed it forward for a new generation, only for that same mythology to eventually be used against Thug in a court of law. But Thug’s appeal from the jump was the off-beatness as a whole—the fact that he didn’t conform to the labels the world placed on him. It makes far more sense why the praise for him came from across the board, from Elton John to Gucci Mane. That ability to transcend became a blueprint for the generation that came after him. They cemented the punk ethos into hip-hop before eventually collapsing into the rage soundscape that has taken over the term “underground.”
Part of that ethos ultimately stems from the attitude that compelled Thug to conceal an assault rifle under an Alessandro Trincone-designed dress (allegedly) on the cover of Jeffrey. That remains in the past for Thug. Still, it’s part of a lore that can’t simply be scrubbed from our memory. YSL can’t continue operating on the mythology that made it famous, but Young Thug can’t escape the cultural legacy created by that mythology either. It’s what turned him into a cult icon, one who was equally dangerous and expressive, but also what embodied the carefree premise of his influence, which championed individuality, free expression, genre-bending, and unconventional aesthetics in its totality. That’s why the ØWAY alignment feels nothing short of appropriate. They encompass his principles without the liabilities, necessarily.
Thug’s tastemaking has always been the most important part of his public persona. But it’s that same attribute that makes Slime Language 3 such a misguided yet fascinating entry, where he himself is more of an afterthought, while artists like Yume, Biggs Money, Tezzus, diamond*, and others prove that the gravitational pull he once had as a soloist has translated to those that he’s banking on becoming the next stars of his label.
Frankly, it’s hard not to see it becoming an effective pathway for this stage of his career when his grip on the youth remains firm. He aligned himself with one of the most promising and exciting underground collectives right now, pushed Sp5der as a go-to brand among Gen Z, and validated the timelessness of his creative philosophy as he embraces his role as an OG in his own right. Slime Language 3 ultimately becomes the imperfect evidence of this transition.
