He covered them with his hand when he talked. He didn't have the gold front teeth yet his teeth were rotted, discolored. He had nothing, his first manager says, when he began rapping. He grew up in Section 8 housing in a very poor, violent part of Atlanta. He is one of 11 children, dropped out of high school, had his first child at 17. He's on-again, off-again with his girlfriend, Jerrika, but at the time we talked he said they're engaged. He recently called the 2-year-old son of a woman he was flirting with online sexy. He calls a Gucci shirt sexy, he calls men sexy, and women he flirts with. When he likes something, he calls it sexy. He wears little girls' dresses as shirts sometimes, women's pants. His toenails are immaculately manicured and painted iridescent. All the greens, he says, to keep me healthy. On the third of every month, a doctor shows up at his mansion near Buckhead and injects him with vitamins. Says he does not like to eat, and goes for days without food. He is 24 years old and six feet three inches tall but has the tiniest little feet, size 8.5, like someone had bound them when he was a child. Looking into a person's eyes-seeking some kind of a connection-is an admission of neediness, and Young Thug would rather be shot dead in the street than need a thing from another human being. I can't even imagine him making actual, on-purpose eye contact with another human. But Thug is alone even in a room full of people. And, being a highly sought-after rapper whose music has been played on YouTube alone 250 million times, he often finds himself in crowds. Young Thug is a figure of unique fascination, the rapper who seems to embody the most mysterious and alluring aspects of the Atlanta music scene, which is itself the object of unique fascination. Over the course of observing him for 20-something hours over several days, I did not witness a single act of what might be described as “conversation.” He'd be sitting next to his little sister Dora at a console in the recording studio or playing a high-stakes dice game with various professional gamblers and the rapper Offset, from the group Migos, and he'd be doing what preschool teachers would refer to as “parallel play.” Even for people who are friends with him, Thug can be difficult to talk to. When it comes time to actually sit down and interview Young Thug, it's extremely unnerving.
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