The Biggest Takeaways From Young Thug's New Project 'So Much Fun'

Image via Getty/Suzi Pratt

Song titling is an art, and Young Thug has always been a visionary. Remember when he named a song "Kanye West" featuring Wyclef Jean on the same project that was also home to a track called "Wyclef Jean"? Remember "OMG Bro"? Remember "Harambe"? Exactly. When the tracklist for So Much Fun leaked on Thursday, a couple things jumped out right away: There's a song called "Pussy" and one named "Lil Baby" (which comes right after another song featuring Lil Baby). Legendary. Before the project even hit streaming services on Friday, it was clear Thug was heading in the right direction on this one. —Eric Skelton

On the heels of Young Thug's highest-charting single as a lead artist to date ("The London") and a series of guest features on major pop songs (Post Malone's "Goodbyes," Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road" remix, Ed Sheeran's "Feels"), some expected this to be the album where he finally made a big push for commercial success and attempted to make a bunch of radio-friendly pop songs. Fortunately, he avoided that temptation and focused instead on doing what he's always done, but at a higher level. So Much Fun has all the weird, experimental touches that make Young Thug so great, and the project would have been ruined with glossy production and lots of features from pop vocalists. Thug fans everywhere can breathe a sigh of relief that Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift didn't end up on this thing. —Eric Skelton

Instead of filling the tracklist with the biggest stars he could find, Young Thug riding for his YSL Records mates on So Much Fun. He recruits his Atlanta-based roster, as well as affiliates of the label, for the majority of the guest features on the project. Gunna leads the pack with two solid features on "Hot" and "Surf." Lil Duke also scores two appearances on "I Bought Her" and "Cartier Gucci Scarf," followed by Lil Keed on "Big Tipper." While Lil Uzi Vert and Lil Baby aren’t technically signed to Thugger’s YSL, they are notable affiliates of the label and have previously pledged their support. Thug includes other guests on the 19-track project, like frequent collaborators Quavo and Future, but the fact that he reserved so much space to his own artists is commendable. In 2014, he told Complex that he wanted to create his own label to put all of his homies on, and the So Much Fun tracklist shows that he’s putting action behind his words. —Jessica McKinney

Young Thug has finally answered what he claims is the "question of the century": Why did he wear a dress on the cover of his 2016 project, JEFFEREY? Ahead of the release of So Much Fun, Thug warned fans that he would be addressing this exact question. "It’s one of the songs on my album," he told No Jumper. "It just explains, like, the question of the century. It’s one bar on the song that answers the question. You'll hear it." As promised, the one liner lands on the chorus of "Just How It Is," when he raps, "Had to wear the dress 'cause I had a stick." Thug elaborated on the topic during his No Jumper interview, stating he wore the dress to hide a "motherfucking AK-47 up under it." Case closed. —Jessica McKinney

A day before the release of So Much Fun, I wrote about how the stars were aligning for Young Thug and the timing felt perfect for his best (and most successful) album yet. Mainstream listeners were finally getting accustomed to his sound, he had just finished a hot streak of successful guest features on pop songs, and he had shown signs that he was capable of putting together his most cohesive body of work to date. After an initial listen to So Much Fun, it seems he took advantage of the opportunity and delivered one of the strongest projects of his career. Mixtape vs. album naming conventions aside, this comes across like more of an album than most other entries in his catalog. So Much Fun feels like a complete thought, as opposed to the collections of fragmented ideas we’ve heard on projects like Beautiful Thugger Girls. It's still unclear whether those J. Cole executive producer rumors were true or not, but somehow, Thug figured out how to construct a cohesive project in a way that he never quite has before. Now, we'll wait to see if it translates to commercial success. —Eric Skelton