Overcoming The Hate:
After dropping his mixtape Jeffrey in 2016, Young Thug caught heat for wearing a dress on his album cover. The cover showed him wearing an enormous frilly dress designed by Alessandro Trincone, but the Atlanta rapper has got the last laugh. Finally, Young Thug blasts through one billion streams on Spotify with hit album ‘Jeffrey’.
Young Thug surpasses 1B Spotify streams on Spotify:
The project surpassed one billion Spotify streams on July 4th according to Chart Data. This is Thugger’s first full-length effort to reach the milestone.
The artist notched a billion streams on the platform once before with his collaboration with Camila Cabello “Havana” which dropped in 2017.
The record album released on August 26, 2016, gave us hit singles such as “Wyclef Jean”, “Guwop” featuring Offset, Quavo, and Young Scooter, and “Pick Up The Phone” featuring Travis Scott and Quavo. In addition, the project included collaborations with Gucci Mane, Gunna, and Wyclef jean himself.
The Cover Art:
Regardless of the all-star supporting cast, the hit album was overshadowed by the androgynous cover art. Although many did applaud the album cover, many mocked it with memes and jokes. Young Thug’s daring fashion sense was compared to Andre 3000 by ex-girlfriend Erykah Badu.
Garfield Lamond, the photographer who shot the cover, revealed in a 2016 interview with The FADER the YSL rapper picked out the garment himself.
“He saw the piece in New York, and said immediately, ‘I want that for the cover'”. “Like, there was no thought about it. He just saw it and knew he wanted it. When we got on set, it definitely took like an hour and half to put it on”.
He added, “He knew it would be crazy. When I showed him the first set of photos, he was like, ‘OK. This is it. This is what we needed from the beginning.”
On his 2019 So Much Fun opener “Just How It Is”, Young Thug addressed the cover, rapping “Had to wear the dress ’cause I had a stick”.
Regardless of the controversial artwork, Jeffrey proved to be a hit. The mixtape debuted in the top 10 on the Billboard 200 and received largely positive reviews from critics. HipHopDX scored the album 3.9 out of 5.
Thugger behind bars:
Young Thug will have to wait to celebrate Jeffrey’s Spotify milestone. He is currently behind bars after being arrested in May as part of a huge 56-count RICO indictment against his YSL collective.
Thug was denied bond in June after being a “flight risk” and “danger to the community” by a Fulton Country judge. The 30-year-old faces two RICO charges and seven additional felonies. His trial is set for January 2023.
