Beautiful Thugger Girls Changed My Life
Article from FEBRUARY 13, 2023
In honor of the 8-year anniversary of the masterpiece that is Beautiful Thugger Girls, I thought it was fitting to share a piece I wrote a few years ago about an album that had such an impact on me:
I remember listening to this album for the first time in high school in my room when it dropped at midnight, one of the few albums I listened to the second it dropped. I refused to play anything else for months after. My friends would request songs in the car, and they’d be vetoed unless it was off of Beautiful Thugger Girls. I listened to “Relationship” with the windows down on summer nights, and “Me Or Us” when I was emotional. I remember having the most fun to “Do U Love Me,” with Thug’s “La la la la la la love me” refrain. Every song is quotable, unique, and timeless.
Beyond soundtracking that moment in my life, Beautiful Thugger Girls went on to influence much of future modern rap albums with its stripped back production, acoustic guitar, and simplistic, spacey synths. Beautiful Thugger Girls laid a foundation that other rappers are still building on today.
BTG’s Acoustic Sound
Thug opens the album with folk-style acoustic guitar and “trynna put my dick inside of yo panties”, giving Sahbabii a ladder for his future works. This song catapulted young singer, Millie Go Lightly’s career, which she continually thanks Thug for on social media. A new ad-lib was introduced in this song, the iconic “yee-haw”. Thug toes the line between country and rap here, creating a bridge for the rap turned country we saw become so popular, like Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road. He continues with the western style later in the song with one of my favorite lines on the album “Country Billy made a couple milly”. It feels like we’re sitting around the campfire, singing “Family Don’t Matter”.
Aside from the country themes, what really took over was the acoustic guitar. Many of rap's big songs in years to come featured an acoustic guitar. “Yosemite” on Astroworld by Travis Scott, and “Drip Too Hard” by Lil Baby and Gunna, to name a few. On Gunna’s Drip Season 3, the song “Oh Okay” features Young Thug and Lil Baby against beautiful, melodic guitar and simplistic trap drums, my favorite song on that album, made possible by the influence of BTG.
BTG’s Themes
Other than the instrumentation on BTG, Thug explores contrasting themes in each of his songs that show the highlights and lowlights of stardom. He explores what it means for his relationships and the dichotomy of love and lust that comes with it.
In contrast to “Family Don’t Matter”, on the album’s penultimate song, “For Y’all”, Thug professes that everything he does is for his loved ones. Over mariachi trumpets, Thug raps, “Did everything for y'all to ball/ Tell y'all risked it all to see a smile on y'all/ I risked my future goals for all y'all.” He takes us on an emotional journey throughout the album, from his rockstar lifestyle and extravagance to the reason he does it all, for his loved ones.
I enjoyed the dichotomy between the songs “Relationship” and “Feel It”, Young Thug goes from promiscuous and lustful on his collaboration with Future to passionate and emotional on his love ballad. Future opens “Relationship” with one of his most iconic lines, “I’m in a relationship with all my bitches, I need to cut some of em’ off, I need help”. Young Thug comes in rapping about luxury cars, and lust, echoing Future with, “I built a relationship with all my bitches, ya.”
In contrast, Young Thug expresses his love and devotion on “Feel It”. Opening with a spaced out synth and lyrics like, “I don’t wanna buy your love I wanna feel it,” in comparison to “Relationship” where he had braggadocios lyrics about buying girls whatever they want. Thug continues, “Yeah, I never ever met a girl like you/ I’m lovin’ every single curve bout’ you/ ooh you know I would smoke the whole world bout’ you.”
Beautiful Thugger Girls concludes with the song “Take Care”. The phrase “take care” feels like he is signing off in a letter, possibly alluding that this whole album is a love letter, to his loved ones, and to the people who adore him, the ‘Beautiful Thugger Girls’.
I can still feel it in my chest every time I hear the opening synth from “Feel It”, I still feel a tear welling in my eye when I hear the beautiful guitar on “You Said”, I still feel like I’m at a party when I hear “For Y’all” and I still cry to “Take Care”. Eight years of an album that has become interwoven with my days, thank you Young Thug!