For now, the mood backstage among Thug’s team is sedate. His birth name is Jeffery Lamar Williams, and he keeps changing the world.ĮDM purists don’t care about hip-hop pedigree, though, and as I hover in Thug’s green room, I’m uncertain how his crowd will react. But they’re also true: Thug is a 28-year-old hitmaker, visionary, fashionista, one of the most polarizing artists of the 21st century, androgynous icon, and leader.

When an Uber driver in Belgium asks me who I am interviewing, the language barrier leads me to use a lot of superlatives. Thug’s set at Tomorrowland is unexpected but not undeserved. The festival’s theme is “The Book of Wisdom,” and Young Thug’s chapter stands out in its pages. These fans will get baptized in a life-affirming cocktail of neon lights, mud, and (mostly) electronic music, played in front of towering backdrops designed like steampunk palaces. Hundreds of thousands of people will gather over two weekends in sprawling recreation grounds in the sleepy town of Boom, just outside of Brussels. Tomorrowland resembles a Harry Potter theme park designed by street performers - the fire-eating, Cirque du Soleil kind. Thug will perform in about an hour’s time: his Afroman, delivered like a cheeky seventh grader showing off for mom, lightens the room. Their basslines bleed ominously through the walls of our quarters, along with an occasional roar of a crowd. “ I was gonna pay my child support, but then I got high…” We’re backstage with Thug’s dozen-plus entourage at the Belgian music festival Tomorrowland, and the Atlanta rapper’s voice dances off the cramped walls even without Auto-Tune.įar outside, EDM DJs play across several different stages on a crisp Saturday evening.

Young Thug strides past me and, almost to himself, starts singing a line from “Because I Got High,” the novelty weed hit by Afroman.

Young thug barter 6 t shirt