ATLANTA — It was hailed as the longest case in Georgia history, and at the center of it was Atlanta rapper, Young Thug, accused with other members of the YSL gang of creating “havoc” in Atlanta and engaging repeatedly in violent crime.
It was May 2022 when the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office laid out an 88-page indictment against Young Thug, whose real name is Jeffrey Williams, and 27 others.
In November 2024, he walked out of jail after pleading guilty as part of a non-negotiated plea in the case.
Since his release, Young Thug hasn’t said much publicly about his incarceration and what life is like now that he is out of jail.
That changed last week, when GQ Magazine released its interview with the Atlanta rapper.
As GQ reporter Zach Baron said in the introduction of his interview, “Since breaking out in the early 2010s, Young Thug has defined the sound of Atlanta rap.”
His music has influenced other artists and thrust his life into stardom. Then he was indicted and put in jail for more than two years.
“It was real. Don’t want to deal with it again, but definitely it was real,” Young Thug said. “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. Just showing me situations, real friends and who you with, who is with you, and how to move and how to be.”
The rapper told the magazine that one of the hardest things to deal with was the fact that he had jailers who were 20 years old, and fans of his music, telling him what to do.
He said there were moments when he thought he would never get out. But there were things on the outside that kept him going.
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“Family. Kids. Career was, like, last. That was irrelevant,” he said.
Young Thug told the magazine that he felt like a big injustice was being done to him on a daily basis.
Throughout his trial, a judge eventually ruled that Young Thug’s own lyrics could be used against him.
“It felt kind of crazy. And cool. Because it’s like, “Oh, everybody listen to me.” But crazy. Like, the First f*****g Amendment is freedom of speech. Well, third or fourth, but the top five. And we’re talking about lyrics?” he said.
As part of his probation, there are things that Young Thug can’t rap about.
“I can’t do nothing like gang things or stuff like that on the internet. I can really talk about what I want to talk about in music. I normally rap about cool things. I just got a few lyrics where I just rap about street stuff and those are the lyrics that they tried to use against me. But most of the time I don’t rap about that type of stuff,” he said.
Another term of his probation, he is limited about the time he can spend in Atlanta.
“Only for certain things,” Young Thug said. “It’s home. I was already out of Atlanta before this case, though. I’ve lived in LA since 2017. So I wasn’t in Atlanta anyway.”
He said that he feels like he is now in exile.
“It just feels like abuse,” Young Thug said.
Following his plea, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis told Channel 2 investigative reporter Mark Winne that there were still several defendants in the case and that her work was not done.
Young Thug said since being released, he has focused on his music and his family. The rapper has also been seen wearing a mask out in public, saying “I don’t feel like people should see me.”
“I just feel like—hidden scars, and just hiding things.”
He says he’s at peace with the experience with his trial and beyond.
“I feel peace. Absolutely. I feel more peace now. You can move with almost nothing over your head. You got probation, but that’s really nothing. I’m not going to violate probation. It’s just like almost fully peaceful. Once probation is over, then it’s like, OK, cool.”
You can watch his full interview with GQ below:
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