Ahead of their headlining performance at Samsung + Billboard Present The Stage at SXSW on March 17, Young Thug and Gunna sat down for an interview with Billboard, where the YSL rappers discussed everything from “Pushing P” to Atlanta’s influence on hip-hop.
During the discussion, Thugger opened up about his retirement plans, hinting at when he may hang it all up for good.
“I just don’t want to be a certain age and still rapping,” he explained. “I’d rather start doing a different thing. It ain’t even about nobody else, it’s just about me and my integrity and how I want to be looked at. Why would I be 45 or 50 years old trying to record albums? When I’m 50 years old, I know 80% of the world is motherfucking 15 to 24. What the fuck am I trying to make an album at 50 for?”
Although he might not be leen on releasing full-length projects in his mid-40s, Thug maintained that wouldn’t stop him from recording songs for some of the world’s biggest fashion houses.
“I’ll sell a song to Chanel when I’m 45 or 50,” he said. “I’ll send three or four songs to Balmain. As far as trying to rap, fuck no, I ain’t doing it. It’s not [that I have] a problem with it, it’s a problem with me doing it. I don’t want to do it at that point. I got other business and other shit to be doing. I got kids that gonna need more attention from me in 10 years.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Gunna shared his thoughts about how his DS4EVER single “Pushin P” inspired a full-on cultural movement.
“We knew it would happen,” he explained. “People are just catching on more and more. It’s nothing that we ain’t been doing. We were ‘Pushin P’ before the song got made. Atlanta was already ‘Pushin P’ before the song came out. That’s why we like, ‘We P’s.’ It’s still lifestyle shit.”
Of course, “Pushin P” is merely the latest cultural trend that’s sprouted up from Atlanta, whose influence on the culture is not lost on Thug.
“We just the quickest adapters,” Thugger said of his hometown. “Everybody from New York still New York. You got Atlanta n****s that sound like New York n****s, you got some Atlanta n****s that look like Miami n****s, you got some Atlanta n****s living in Los Angeles. New York is just New York. That’s the No. 1 reason we gonna have it for a minute. We adapt, and we pay attention to the charts, we see drill beats, and the New York sound going crazy right now. We gonna adapt and get on it.”
Read the full interview with Young Thug and Gunna here.
