Young Thug is currently dealing with a massive firestorm in Atlanta hip-hop, which reached a tipping point due to leaked audio of him allegedly speaking on other folks in a police interrogation. However, when Joe Budden discussed the more general drama with Thugger in a recent podcast episode, his criticism of the situation brought up broader points about his post-prison release moves.
Specifically, Budden thinks that his "stock has plummeted" since the end of his YSL RICO trial for various reasons, per joebuddenclips/fanpage. "He is putting on a masterclass in how to take a good brand and totally f**k it up," he remarked. The rapper and podcaster said that the Atlanta artist just called a bunch of people about the Gunna situation rather than drop more exciting new music. Also, a lot of those alleged conversations emerged before the jail release, or they surfaced after.
As such, Joe Budden thinks Young Thug has been very "chatty" recently and hasn't focused as much as he should on new music. "The branding and marketing genius that he's shown himself to be, it ain't even been flashes of that," he posited. Joe added that there's always an "embarrassing look" for Thug in his opinion. For the record, he doesn't care about any snitching claims or anything like that, but he has an issue with how disastrously he handled this fallout in his opinion.
Joe Budden On Young Thug
More specifically, Joe Budden said that Young Thug's Gunna beef is only a small part of his disappointment. That's more of a personal relationship, in Budden's view, that does not have the same easy answer to it. Nevertheless, he thinks Thugger should've kept his head down and focused more on label support and working out his financials.
Joe theorized that Young Thug's next musical moves don't have the same support from 300 label boss Kevin Liles, due to the messiness of this rollout. At the end of the day, these are a lot of narratives to contend with, all with many different answers. Hopefully everything steers itself into the right direction eventually, no matter whether Thugger accepts Budden's critical but analytical perspective.
