Young Thug has opened up about his protracted legal troubles and jail time over the last three years, saying he thinks he is “too big for jail”.
The Grammy-winning rapper and founder of the Young Stoner Life (YSL) label was indicted by Georgia prosecutors along with dozens of others in May 2022 under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Prosecutors alleged that YSL was more than a label, accusing it of operating as a front for a criminal gang that was involved in murders and drug trafficking.
The trial became the longest in Georgia state history, and Young Thug – real name Jeffery Williams – eventually pleaded guilty to six charges related to gang and racketeering activity in November 2024, having been held in jail for over two years without bail. He was released that month as part of a negotiated sentence that accounted for time already served.
“I take full responsibility for my crimes, for my charges,” Young Thug said in court ahead of his release. “To really everybody that has got something to do with this situation, I want to say sorry.”
Now, in an interview with GQ, Young Thug has asserted that he is an “innocent man”, explaining that he pleaded guilty on those specific charges in order to avoid a harsher sentence.
“Just pleading to something you know that you didn’t do is crazy,” he said. “But you get a chance to keep fighting. [You can] worry about the jury’s fate, or you [can] just go ahead now and go home. It’s like shit, go home.”
Reflecting on spending over two years in prison, he said: “It was real. Don’t want to deal with it again, but definitely it was real.”
The trial became the centre of major public attention, in part due to its extraordinary length, and Thug said being a part of such a high-profile case made him “feel like I’m one of the biggest stars”.
“The judge was just like, ‘Yo, you got to realise who you are’,” he continued. “My lawyer, Brian Steel, he always told me every day, like, ‘Bro, you got to know, you got to know’. And then me just sitting in the cell every night alone, it was just kind of like, ‘I’m big’.”
Speaking about how his faith became important to him during the period, he added: “I think I’m too big for jail, but I think I’m not too big for God. So God could put the biggest person in there. I feel like I’m taller than the jail, but he somehow could just squish me in there. I think it was like a God thing.”
Young Thug is now turning his attention back to music, having appeared as a guest on Playboi Carti’s new album ‘Music’ in March, and releasing the new track ‘Money On Money’, featuring Future, earlier this week, which you can listen to above. He is set to release his new album ‘UY Scuti’, the follow-up to 2023’s ‘Business Is Business’, imminently, although there is no confirmed release date yet.
