All right, let’s try this again—the last time I attempted to see Young Thug, I got sprayed with a fire extinguisher. It was nearing 2 a.m. at the Prophet Bar and he was clearly not in the venue. The house lights soon illuminated the room and people in the crowd began tossing their beer cans at the stage. There was tension in the air and then there was potassium bicarbonate and then the venue emptied out.
The Atlanta rapper made it to Tuesday night’s affair at the House of Blues: The Dallas stop on a joint tour with Travi$ Scott, creator of dorky gothic-tinged rap music that sounds culled from leftovers that didn’t make the final cut for Yeezus. While his music lacks the creativity and rebellion that occupies every cranny of Thug’s, Missouri City’s Scott is a much better performer than his partner. Jeffrey Williams is often lethargic onstage and, for better or worse, increasingly less interested in actual rapping than he is making noises with his throat.
The two spent a 100-or-so-minute set performing in four to five song bursts. Scott would nearly incite a riot, then the crowd would catch its breath while Thug stalked the stage and performed, often with a vocal track playing in the background. The setup killed the show’s momentum, but the largely young crowd didn’t seem to care. Every time Scott was back on stage, they whipped their bodies with abandon into one another to the degree that the entire floor moved with a chaotic sway.
Thug, meanwhile, is a shifty rapper and an uncomfortable performer. He seems most comfortable in the studio, away from any other obligations beside whatever he’s interested in in any given moment, such as pouring codeine cough syrup into a 40-ounce Olde English. On an episode of a Vice tour of the Atlanta rap scene, Thug saunters through the studio as if the reporter and the camera aren’t present.
On record, he’s unpredictable and full of ideas, shifting his delivery without notice into a whisper or a shout, a moan or a croon. He has also given me musical ADD: I haven’t been able to make it through Kendrick Lamar’s new album front-to-back without stopping it to throw on a Rich Gang track, last year’s pairing with Rich Homie Quan. When you listen to music through Thug’s ears, few can keep his pace.
On stage, it’s a different story. He started with “2 Cups Stuffed,” a highlight from 2013’s 1017 Thug, but the track was sped up and he had trouble keeping up with it. His terrific loosies that he’s put out through Soundcloud with producer Metro Boomin under the hilariously trolling moniker Metro Thuggin—“Free Gucci,” “Warrior,” “Blanguage”—failed to resonate with the crowd. His singles fared better; his feature on T.I.’s “About the Money” got people moving, as did “Danny Glover.”
When the crowd’s interest waned, or Thug simply looked apathetic toward getting them involved, producer Metro Boomin zoomed out from behind the DJ booth and began pogoing in the front of the stage.
Thug took any chance he had to sneak off that stage, and wasn’t present when Houston legend Trae appeared to perform their song “Try Me.” I forgave the absence when Trae ran through “Swang.”
But later Thug returned, wearing a poncho, belting out those beginning notes of “Givenchy.” He ran through a verse of “Warrior” furiously. During “730” he was practically yelping to a crowd that suddenly looked delirious and confused. These moments made it worth it. But there were so many others, like cutting off his biggest hit, “Lifestyle,” after a single run through of its hook, that made me glad he brought a support system with him that could make up for his performance flaws with raw energy.
