Young Thug‘s new mixtape Slime Season hit the internet yesterday, causing a stir as it featured the track Take Kare, previously released as a Rich Gang track featuring Young Thug and Lil Wayne in October of last year. It wasn’t so much the quality of the tape as it was the featuring of said track seemed to suggest that the beef between Thug and Wayne was finally over.
In what has been a tumultuous year for Thug, Wayne, and YMCMB alum Birdman, could we be finally seeing the end of one of hip hop’s most conspicuous beefs?
Wayne, who Young Thug at different points considered his idol, even going so far as to say that he would rather record with Lil Wayne than Michael Jackson, had been embroiled in a battle over the rights to his music, even suing Birdman over the failure to release his ‘final’ album Tha Carter V before antagonising his former label by releasing a tidal exclusive track. With Carter V on the shelf, Young Thug in a respectful homage was set to name one of his mixtapes Carter 6, but was forced to change the title to Barter 6 after Wayne took umbrage to the theft of his Carter franchise.
The war of words quickly spiralled out of control. Wayne and Thug exchanged disses, with Thug going so far as to perform in Wayne’s home town on the release day of Barter 6. Obviously things had been brewing for a while, but reached a head that night when Lil Wayne’s tour bus was shot at. In a bizarre turn of events, in the indictment of the alleged shooter Jimmy “Peewee” Winfrey, Young Thug and Birdman were named, namely due to phone calls being made to each of them before, and after the shooting. In other words, shit got real.
It didn’t stop there, as Young Thug was arrested only two months later after being told to dismount his hovertrax scooter by a mall cop, his response: threatening to shoot the cop in the face. With a court date yet to be set it seemed as if the beef was finally beginning to simmer down, and like always, time appears to heal all wounds. Now with the release of Slime Season, it appears as if the feud may be over. But of course, this was a track released nearly a year ago, and I’m skeptical until we see Thug and Wayne recording again. And let’s hope it’s soon so we can get some more great collaborations.