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Future and Young Thug Squash “Beef”, Hit the Studio

Alex Osborne

Last week, Future unleashed DJ Esco’s latest mixtape, Esco Terrestrial. One of the most interesting tracks on the tape was the Future and Young Thug collaboration, Who.

‘Who’ is just one of the questions surrounding this rather unexpected collab, the others being what, where, when, why and how did they squash this enormous beef they supposedly had going? Not only did they come together for Esco’s mixtape but Wheezy overnight Tweeted and Snapchatted a studio session featuring Young Thug, Future and DJ Esco.

https://twitter.com/wheezy5th/status/747679863738335232?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

https://twitter.com/Thundathundaa/status/747758259927453696

It certainly appears as though whatever beef they had is history. If the two rappers have been back in the studio together on more than one occasion, could we infer that this is the dawn of a wave of collaborative songs between the pair? It also begs the questions of what this feud was even about and whether there even was one in the first place? Did it all start because producer Metro Boomin, who has worked extensively with Future and Thug, only credited Future by name for popularising the mixtape trend? Or was it just a publicity construct like so many other beefs?

When we break down the cause and timeline of the beef, it really goes to show they were fighting over nothing and that they could have been producing quality tracks like Who this entire time.

Last year Metro Tweeted a picture of Future with this caption:

https://twitter.com/MetroBoomin/status/663794583663439872

He then went on to clarify, ending the discussion with:

Later that day Young Thug injected himself into the conversation:

Future’s response came in the form of a couple of cryptic tweets, stating “I pray the real live forever and all the fake get exposed!” and “Don’t judge me by my past, I don’t live there no more,” which could be in reference to almost anything – but was taken as a shot at Young Thug, who responded with, “I have nun in the world against Future I listen to his music… His music makes me happy and I hope he continues to bless me and others with it.”

As far as all of this reads, some very subtle seeds may have been planted but this was hardly a full blown conflict. Young Thug genuinely seems to like Future and it was difficult to conceive how anyone would assume there was any aggression from the former towards the latter, who never once claimed he was singlehandedly responsible for popularising mixtapes. If anyone had issues here it’s Thug and Metro, whose bold statements first ignited the exchange.

Then a few months later came this exchange:

https://twitter.com/youngthug/status/694995765685526528

That was it? A spot of shit-talking over Twitter? Not even a single diss track from either camp to solidify this as real beef? The whole narrative looking back seems ridiculous. People from all walks of life talk smack on social media at their friends and even hip-hop superstars aren’t afraid to rib each other and have a laugh. We’ve truly reached a low point if two artists can’t throw good-natured shade in a public forum without everybody jumping to the conclusion that they despise each other. Real friends run each other down far worse than this.

Whatever the story of the past year, and not being well-acquainted with either Future or Young Thug means we’ll never know the entire truth of it, it is great to see and hear good music coming from two rappers at the top of their game.

Image: Ben Watts / GQ