Beautiful Thugger Girls

Beautiful Thugger Girls is the fifth commercial mixtape by American rapper Young Thug. It was released on June 16, 2017, by 300 Entertainment and Atlantic Records. The mixtape features guest appearances from Millie Go Lightly, Gunna, Future, Quavo, Snoop Dogg, Lil Durk, and Jacquees. Production on the mixtape was handled by Billboard Hitmakers, Charlie Handsome, London, Rex Kudo, and Wheezy, among others.

Beautiful Thugger Girls
Mixtape by
ReleasedJune 16, 2017 (2017-06-16)
Studio
Genre
Length56:37
Label
Producer
Young Thug chronology
Jeffery
(2016)
Beautiful Thugger Girls
(2017)
Young Martha
(2017)

Beautiful Thugger Girls received acclaim from critics, and debuted at number eight on the US Billboard 200. It also debuted at number four on the US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums.

Background

edit

On April 26, 2017, Young Thug originally announced that the project would be titled E.B.B.T.G., an abbreviation for Easy Breezy Beautiful Thugger Girls, which was a play on "easy, breezy, beautiful CoverGirl" as the slogan for CoverGirl.[1] After several delays, the release date was hinted a week before release and officially confirmed two days before release.[2][3][4] Beautiful Thugger Girls was described by Young Thug as a "singing album", which includes crossovers to musical genres such as R&B, dancehall and country.[5][6][7] Although it has been referred to as an album by Young Thug, 300 Entertainment have reported it as a commercial mixtape.[8]

Critical reception

edit
Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
SourceRating
AnyDecentMusic?7.8/10[9]
Metacritic84/100[10]
Review scores
SourceRating
The A.V. ClubB+[11]
Crack Magazine8/10[12]
Exclaim!9/10[13]
Pitchfork8.0/10[14]
PopMatters8/10[15]
Pretty Much AmazingB+[16]
Tiny Mix Tapes3.5/5[17]
Tom Hull – on the WebB+ ( )[18]
Vice (Expert Witness) [19]
XXL4/5[20]

Beautiful Thugger Girls was met with widespread critical acclaim.[21][10] At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the mixtape received an average score of 84, based on eight reviews.[10] Aggregator AnyDecentMusic? gave it 7.8 out of 10, based on their assessment of the critical consensus.[9]

Paul Thompson of Pitchfork labelled Beautiful Thugger Girls Young Thug's "most compelling experiment in pop", saying it "strips away all the clutter, leaving his best-developed melodies and most evocative songwriting to date" while comparing it to Lil Wayne's Rebirth.[14] Scott Glaysher of XXL said, "Thug sounds the best he's ever sounded, despite some of the songs begin [sic] fairly far removed from his proverbial comfort zone".[20] Daniel Bromfield of Pretty Much Amazing argued "Young Thug cycles through a lot of styles here: lovebird R&B, sensitive acoustic folk, even country. But he doesn't terraform them to his whims so much as try them on for size".[16] Judnick Maynard of The Fader commented that Beautiful Thugger Girls "becomes more than a country album: the music isn't his master, instead he bends it to his will", and is a "testament to Young Thug's constantly evolving creative reach".[22] Tiny Mix Tapes's Corrigan B stated: "Beautiful Thugger Girls is remarkable because of its Thugger-ness" but noted that "Beautiful Thugger Girls marks the point at which his pure lyricism, absent an unimpeachable sense of melody and flow, has begun to detract from the project as a whole."[17]

The A.V. Club's Renatio Pagnani stated: "Few artists manage to balance wide-eyed eroticism with genuine warmth, and fewer manage the feat while packing multiple albums' worth of hooks into each song. For Thug, it's just his default mode."[11] Winston Cook-Wilson of Spin said, "The album feels unprecedented within his catalog because it strikes a balance Thug has never quite pulled off on a single project: mixing a unified, album-wide sound with moments of aggressive experimentation and nagging hooks".[23] Exclaim! critic Anya Zoledziowski thought that "Beautiful Thugger Girls—which lists Drake as executive producer—pushes the boundaries of Atlanta hip-hop while adding yet another groundbreaking project to the trapper's discography".[13]

Robert Christgau was less impressed in his column for Vice. While highlighting "Take Care" and "Family Don't Matter", he summarized the mixtape as "singsong porn from a purple people eater who's seldom as funny as he used to be and sometimes funnier than he wants to be".[19]

Year-end lists

edit
Select year-end rankings of Beautiful Thugger Girls
PublicationListRankRef.
Crack MagazineThe Top 100 Albums of 2017
87
HipHopDXHipHopDX's Best Rap Albums of 2017
19
Rap-UpRap-Up's 20 Best Albums of 2017
20
Spin50 Best Albums of 2017
22

Commercial performance

edit

Beautiful Thugger Girls debuted at number eight on the US Billboard 200 and number four on the US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums with 37,000 album-equivalent units of which 7,000 were pure album sales in its first week of release.[28] On December 6, 2019, the album was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for combined sales and album-equivalent units of over 500,000 units in the United States.[29]

Track listing

edit
Beautiful Thugger Girls track listing
No.TitleWriter(s)Producer(s)Length
1."Family Don't Matter" (featuring Millie Go Lightly)
4:55
2."Tomorrow Til Infinity" (featuring Gunna)
3:48
3."She Wanna Party" (featuring Millie Go Lightly)
  • Williams
  • Griffiths
  • Kudo
  • Ryan Vojtesak
  • Rex Kudo
  • Charlie Handsome
4:10
4."Daddy's Birthday"
3:28
5."Do U Love Me"
  • Williams
  • Holmes
London3:29
6."Relationship" (featuring Future)
  • Billboard Hitmakers
  • BLSSD
3:35
7."You Said" (featuring Quavo)
Wheezy6:42
8."On Fire"
  • Williams
  • Glass
  • Vojtesak
  • Wheezy
  • Charlie Handsome
3:59
9."Get High" (featuring Snoop Dogg and Lil Durk)Young Chop4:53
10."Feel It"
  • Williams
  • Glass
Wheezy3:56
11."Me or Us"
2:37
12."Oh Yeah"
  • Williams
  • Glass
Wheezy3:49
13."For Y'all" (featuring Jacquees)
  • Williams
  • Burgess
Billboard Hitmakers3:39
14."Take Care"
Judge3:37
Total length:56:37

Notes

  • The vinyl version of "Me or Us" features a guest appearance by Travis Scott.[30]

Samples

Personnel

edit

Credits adapted from the album's liner notes.[31]

Charts

edit

Certifications

edit
Certifications for Beautiful Thugger Girls
RegionCertificationCertified units/sales
United States (RIAA)[29]Gold500,000

Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone.

Release history

edit
Release dates and formats for Beautiful Thugger Girls
RegionDateLabel(s)Format(s)Ref.
VariousJune 16, 2017[42]
January 26, 2018Vinyl[43]

References

edit