Young Thug Shares J. Cole’s Advice: “You Gotta Get Back To Lyrics”

Young Thug Shares J. Cole’s Advice: “You Gotta Get Back To Lyrics”

Don’t get it twisted, Young Thug is nice with the bars. If you need further convincing, take a listen to ten of his wildest verses right here. On that note, many were immediately intrigued by the creative partnership of Thug and J. Cole, who held it down as the executive producer of So Much Fun. Today, Thugger spoke with Big Boy for one of, if not the, best interviews of his career, taking a moment to detail his experience both working with and connecting with J. Cole

“Through the grapevine, I had heard he liked my music” explains Thugger, beginning around the 15-minute mark. “So we ended up going on tour. We was with each other every day. He’s one of those guys who don’t want to rub anybody the wrong way. He won’t be around. The first week of the tour, he would go on the stage and go straight home. He had his kid and his wife with him.” As he tells it, Thug also learned a lesson during the KOD Tour, which essentially equates to remaining humble. “It’s a very very very very very important learning experience,” he says. “He’s the biggest artist, this is his concert, but he still open up – that shit just calmed me down, like ‘you ain’t too much of a superstar, come down. He got more money than you!'” 

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Thug also spills the beans about the elusive Kill Edward, clearly impressed that Cole was willing to open up at his own tour as Kill Edward. “Once I seen that it was like okay. We started talking, I might catch him before he get on stage, like ‘yo we gotta link.’ We ain’t gon’ make this awkward, we gotta link. He get offstage, we in his room.” Big Boy wonders what ultimately drew Cole to Thugger on a creative level, prompting an interesting response from Jeffery.

“I don’t think it was about the music,” reveals Thug. “It ended up being about the music. I think he seen how pure and natural I saw. When I got around him, it was like ‘this song right here, this video here’ – he’d show me a video on YouTube of me chilling with my kids. It made me realize, it ain’t really the music with him. He’s trying to find honesty…He seen me as a person, as a free person. That made him start paying attention to my music. He started listening to old music from 2008, 2009, then he like ‘you gotta get back to lyrics. You be putting out music and having too much fun and playing.”

Though Young Thug ultimately didn’t think he changed his style too drastically on So Much Fun, it’s hard to argue that he sounds as sharp as ever on his biggest release thus far. Though perhaps an unexpected pairing, it turns out that Cole and Thugger were a solid fit, and we can only hope the partnership continues moving forward.