Young Thug’s Plea Deal Puts His Freedom On a Tightrope

Young Thug is free — sort of. Last week, the Atlanta-born rapper accepted a plea deal in the sprawling RICO case against him and associates of his YSL record label. As part of the plea, he agreed to 15 years of probation with 20 years of prison time backloaded, meaning that as long as he completes his probation, the backloaded time disappears. The deal includes intense requirements, including random drug tests and property searches, a 10-year ban on him entering the Atlanta metropolitan area with the exception of attending funerals, weddings, graduations, and medical emergencies. He is also mandated to do quarterly anti-violence school lectures. If a judge rules he violated that condition, or any other condition, he’ll have to serve those backloaded years in prison.

On Thursday, Thug’s attorney, Brian Steel, noted during his lengthy closing argument that he felt like Thug, whose real name is Jeffery Lamar Williams Jr., was on track to be acquitted in the case, which has taken the last two-and-a-half years of his life. But Thug wanted to take a deal and get home to his family as soon as possible. His carceral experience wore him down. Even if Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis failed to garner the splashy life sentence initially sought in the case, she’s assured that Thug is out of Atlanta for now, and his YSL label is drastically upended. He’s lost out on a fortune in potential concert earnings during his incarceration and likely spent another fortune on legal fees. That’s to say nothing of how solitary confinement may have weighed on his psyche. Fulton County had him in a pit. And to get out of it, he agreed to walk a tightrope. 

The justice system relies on defendants being so fatigued from their time in jail or during a lengthy trial that they simply plea bargain and get their trial over with, even if they feel they’re innocent. That’s why many abolitionists and criminal justice reform advocates argue that probation amounts to the penal system net-widening its control over American citizens. In 2023, Knowable Magazine found that just 34% of people convicted of crimes are actually in prison; most are on probation or parole, one misdeed away from incarceration. Thug’s release under such restrictive probation terms is especially unfair because there didn’t seem to be much damning evidence against him in the first place.

As Judge Reese Whitaker noted in her closing remarks, the prosecution’s initial offer of probation (which they took back) seemingly conceded that they didn’t think he was the danger to the community they initially framed him as. While some of the people around Thug had allegedly committed violent crimes, they didn’t seem to have much to tie the rapper to them besides text records, rap lyrics, and social media posts they hoped would collectively paint a menacing portrait. As DA Willis noted, RICO cases allow prosecutors to pile charges and evidence together to take one big swing. But in this case, it’s unclear if all their circumstantial evidence was enough to convict Thug.

Perhaps the YSL trial’s relative failure will give prosecutors pause about using rap lyrics at the core of their indictments. Their eligibility is determined by Federal Rule 403, which weighs evidence’s probative value to solving a case against the optic of “Unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, misleading the jury, undue delay, wasting time, or needlessly presenting cumulative evidence.” In 2022, a Maryland Court of Appeals ruled that rap lyrics were admissible evidence in a murder and weapons trial. The lyrics in question referenced the .40 caliber gun used in the alleged crime.

But Thug’s, or any artist’s, general rap posturing can’t be held up to that standard. Rappers have been criminalized since the genre’s inception. And now, prosecutors nationwide are brazenly attempting to roll rappers into their friends’ misdeeds, using their art as the glue to connect them. Since Thug’s release, social media speculation has grown to a fever pitch over everything from alleged subliminals sent toward Gunna to at least one A.I.-generated song purported to be Thug’s “First Day Out” record. Celebrity culture, especially on social media, is as fueled by rumors and misinformation as ever. Now, with the heavy-handed conditions of his probation, Thug’s freedom could come down to a social media post.

During Judge Whitaker’s closing statement, she chastised Thug about maintaining connections to people in the streets and cleaning up his lyrical content. But, unsurprisingly, she said nothing of the environment that created the violence that Thug and other artists rap about. Underserved Atlanta communities are suffering from economic deprivation at the cost of the Justice system’s funding. Instead of prioritizing poor families, city officials focused on Cop City to further its gentrification agenda. Even if Fani Willis was right in her estimation that YSL was a gang, this solitary case doesn’t change Atlanta’s systemic oppression, the true cause of violence. Instead of expressing a 30,000-foot perspective of the kind of communities that spur gang violence, she criticized Thug for what he raps and who he grew up around.

Throughout 2018, Philly rapper Meek Mill’s eight years of probation (stemming from a gun charge) were nationally decried as draconian; Thug will be on probation for almost double that time. On Meek’s “What’s Free” he rapped, “‘Oh say can you see’, I don’t feel like I’m free,” juxtaposing the National Anthem with his oppressive reality as another number in the justice system. Black people in America are already contending with a restricted definition of liberty. And now, Thug, a high-profile beacon of a heavily targeted genre, has to navigate one more layer of conditional freedom in the probation system.