Mariah The Scientist, Young Thug, & The 'Ride Or Die' Myth That Eclipses Her Music

It's been a rough few weeks for Thugger. "One of my little hoes—one of my little girls—she posting stuff on the internet at my condo from a long time ago,” Young Thug can be heard saying on a jailhouse call. Many have surfaced online, but it's one of few that didn't involve gossiping about his Rap peers.

The voice on the line is casual, even amused, as he explains away the digital trail left by woman who wasn't his girlfriend, Mariah the Scientist. Then comes the part that stings. He recalls Mariah questioning him. “She like, ‘Man… girls posted in your condo?’” said Thugger, chuckling as he admitting to lying to Mariah about the timeline. "[It] wasn't a minute ago, it was the day before I got locked up, man… Whatever happened wasn’t even a month, like 18 days or something like that. Whatever, I ain’t doing it with her. So, whoopie doo.”

In those few words, the intimacy of a private relationship became public evidence. A lover’s conversation turned into a headline, and a reminder of how quickly women tied to powerful men find their pain dissected by strangers. For Mariah, an Atlanta-born R&B artist still carving her place in music, the calls exposed more than a boyfriend’s betrayal. They placed her squarely inside the spectacle of Young Thug’s RICO case, where standing by your man, and experiencing public humiliation, now play side by side.

“I think that it’s crazy when I go to an interview and somebody is making it seem like they care about me and my success and they care about my music and they f*ck with me as a person, and then all they want to talk about is my relationship," Mariah told Rolling Stone last month. "Or you notice that they know more about what they’ve seen about my relationship than actually being a listener of my music."

Her frustration is clear and justified. Mariah has spent years releasing albums, touring, and building a loyal fan base, yet her artistry is constantly filtered through the lens of her relationship. Instead of being treated as a serious musician, she’s been reduced to a proxy for Thug’s choices. The leaked calls only sharpen that imbalance that every new revelation about his private life becomes another headline with Mariah's name attached. There are interview questions she has to sidestep, reminders that in Hip Hop, women are too often defined by the men they stand beside rather than the work they create.

Her 2023 project, To Be Eaten Alive, was released to critical praise for its songwriting and clarity. She’s taken that music on the road, performing to packed crowds who come to hear her voice, not to rehash the details of her personal life. Clips from the tour show an artist in command of her stage, weaving intimacy into performances that remind audiences why she’s one of R&B’s most compelling new voices. Yet, when the spotlight shifts back to interviews or headlines, it too often circles back to Young Thug—eclipsing the very accomplishments she has worked to build.

Nearly a year after Young Thug walked out of jail, his past is still speaking for him. A flood of jailhouse calls, leaked and amplified online, have turned into a running commentary on his private life. In them, Thugger speaks on Drake, Gunna, Lil Baby, Metro Boomin, executives at Quality Control, and more. Hip Hop fans have been in a flurry of debates since the first audio dropped, but those chats involving Mariah the Scientist have stolen attention for more than just Rap beefs or regional Hip Hop takeovers.

We've mentioned the recording capturing him brushing off a situation with another woman, recalling how Mariah pressed him about the evidence. Then came the exchange that ricocheted across the internet with an unidentified woman:

Thug: “When are you planning on having kids…?”
Woman: “When you get out!”
Thug: “Bet.”
Woman: “When you come home, I’ll have kids.”

The conversation was impossible to dismiss. Within hours, the audio became shorthand for betrayal and yet another test of Mariah’s loyalty. Thug eventually offered an apology on Twitter, directed at both Mariah and the other woman. "My baby I was wrong and I’m sorry for what I put u through," Young Thug penned on X to Mariah. "U deserved better from me. Thank you for everything and I will do anything to make this work. U showed me what love is and I hope I haven’t lost u forever… everybody leave her out of this please she’s an innocent girl and feels bad about all of this. Please give her peace."

The singer's response wasn't a statement, but music. Mariah the Scientist posted a string of lyrics to Instagram, a quiet assertion in a moment when her relationship once again overshadowed her career. For years now, she has been defined as Thug’s partner, the one who visited, spoke publicly in support of his freedom, and stayed loyal through a two-year RICO ordeal. She stood in that role faithfully, even as his recorded words suggest he was mapping out futures with other women.

“This has really been a long time coming and it has been really hard,” Mariah told an audience at the Barclay's Center last year, just prior to Thug's release. “There was people who was telling me I would never see him again. There was people who was laughing at me and laughing at the situation, making fun of us…Let’s just make it to the end [of the show], so I can get on this jet!”

The leak of Young Thug’s calls opened up a messy debate about prison culture and the limits of devotion. On social media, many people, particularly those who’ve done time, argued that the phone is a lifeline when you’re locked away. Two years behind bars means countless calls and conversations. In their view, it was inevitable that Thug would be heard talking about “any and everything.”

And he did. Many of those conversations were with Mariah herself, proof that she was a steady presence through his ordeal. On one, their talk drifted to Memphis rapper GloRilla. Thug’s words were brutal: “That b*tch ugly as f*ck. They say she ain’t ugly, man that b*tch ain’t nothing. Long ass, bullsh*t ass wig, skinny sh*t, God damn big ass head, big mouth… I would not pursue her, like at all. That sh*t ain’t nothing.”

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The backlash was immediate. GloRilla shrugged off the drama and slyly suggested publicly that Thug had once tried to flirt with her over text. He issued her an apology, too, adding her name to the growing list of women caught in the fallout of his leaked words. Yet, Mariah wasn’t spared either. Critics argued that a man willing to degrade another woman in your presence will just as easily degrade you in someone else’s. The point was proven soon after, when the calls about Mariah herself surfaced, revealing not loyalty, but infidelity.

“I am extremely transparent,” Mariah also said last year in her chat with RS. “I’ve always been like that. I feel like as I’m getting older, the portion of me that felt like being so transparent will always get me the prize, I’m starting to feel differently about. Maybe I’m wrong for being so open. Maybe it’s wrong to be open because you just get stepped on so much like that.”

However, you have to remember, this isn't the first time Young Thug was caught saying controversial things about his girl. In December 2024, Law & Crime leaked a reported jail call where Thugger was heard speaking with a woman named Leena Sayed, saying Mariah loves him "too much." He added that he loved the singer as well, but admitted that he passed the time in jail talking to approximately 10 women each day.

Scandal was not how Mariah the Scientist built her name. She crafted it on music that fans have called some of the most incisive R&B of her generation. From Master to Ry Ry World to Hearts Sold Separately, she has toured, headlined, and steadily shaped a lane that’s hers. By every measure, she is an artist standing on her own two feet.

Still, in the last three years, almost every major headline with Mariah the Scientist's name in it has included Young Thug's. Press runs that should have been about her work turned into segments about how often she visits her boyfriend, her feelings about his case, and what it means to love a man facing decades in prison. There was even a viral video allegedly showing Mariah in a physical altercation with a woman, purportedly over Young Thug. Her career hasn’t been framed as its own trajectory, but has been treated as an extension of his saga.

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This isn’t new. Hip hop has a long history of subsuming women’s artistry into men’s narratives. Karrueche Tran has long established herself as an actress, model, and host, but she's still referred to as "Chris Brown’s ex." Keyshia Cole’s turbulent relationships often eclipsed her music. Even Beyoncé, arguably the most powerful woman in music, was forced to share her career-defining Lemonade with Jay-Z’s betrayal. Although their marriage is over, Offset has publicly apologized to Cardi B for being with other women. For many women, fame doesn’t protect you from being rewritten as somebody’s girlfriend, baby mama, or muse.

Further, Young Thug’s legal battles have been some of the most significant Hip Hop has ever seen. In May 2022, he was arrested alongside dozens of associates in a sweeping RICO indictment that prosecutors claimed tied YSL Records to organized crime in Atlanta. The charges pulled in the entire ecosystem around Thugger, raising questions about whether Rap lyrics could be used as evidence in court and whether one of the ATL's most successful Rap collective was a record label or a criminal enterprise.

For more than two years, Thug’s name never left the news cycle. His trial was livestreamed, dissected on social media, and treated as a referendum on Rap itself. Witnesses flipped, plea deals piled up, and every development became fuel for conversation. The gravity of the case was about the intersection of music, power, and the state’s long history of criminalizing Hip Hop.

That’s the storm Mariah The Scientist has been caught in. Her career, interviews, and public image have been pulled into the orbit of one of the most closely watched trials in music history. Standing by Thug meant inheriting the weight of his case, whether she wanted it or not. And she's living that reality in real time. She is talented enough to stand alone, but she is constantly pulled back into the orbit of a man whose drama feeds the culture machine.

"What I don’t like is when interviews will be an hour long, two hours long sometimes, and the one headline they choose is ‘Mariah the Scientist is with Young Thug,'" the singer previously stated. "It’s like we literally just sat here and talked about all this other shit, and this is what you chose to publicize about me?”

Moreover, the irony is sharp as her lyrics often wrestle with betrayal and self-possession. The very themes that make her music identifiiable are now being played out on the public stage, except she doesn’t control the script. The leaks, apologies, and speculation have made her a supporting character in her own story. Still, as she continues to process the public fallout, her supporters are ready for her bounce back, in time.

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