The pace of Young Thug news has mercifully quickened in recent days, with Tuesday’s arrival of a Tiny Desk (Home) show from the Young Stoner Life founder firmly embedding fans in the Punk era.
The marathon continued on Wednesday with the release of a new digital cover story from Rolling Stone, wherein Thug offers up a range of top-shelf quotables while spending some time with writer Jeff Ihaza in Atlanta, Georgia. And while the basis of the feature is Punk, which is due in October and has its origins in a track written several years back at a hotel in Italy, Thug also manages to get in some thoughts about how he’s handled the pandemic and his continued ambitions beyond music.
Speaking on what changed for him during quarantine starting in 2020, Thug noted that he’s become more interested in gaming, an activity he will now sometimes participate in with one of his kids. In that vein, Thug also developed an affinity for Twitch, though he made it clear that he was not at all fond of staying inside.
“Prison is the worst thing, but being in the house not being able to do nothing—and you can die from air!?” he told Ihaza in the piece, which is complemented by photography from Jackie Nickerson.
Elsewhere, the recent Travis Barker collaborator said the pandemic helped him “start to see shit” from the perspective of the women in his life.
As for talk of the ambitions variety, including Thug’s Sp5der line, Thug was asked if he was aiming to work toward having music sometimes seem like a “secondary concern,” with Ihaza citing Kanye West and Jay-Z as examples of other artists who have taken this approach at points in their respective careers.
“Yeah, I want to be the richest Black man in the world,” he responded.
For the full feature, which also includes word of a mysterious Elton John-involved project and a mention of Young Thug’s previously disclosed health scare, head to the RS site.
As revealed during this week’s Tiny Desk (Home) show, Young Thug’s new album—the solo studio follow-up to 2019’s So Much Fun—will be released on Oct. 15.
