Young Thug attempted to switch things up on his 18th studio album “Punk”.

The album was filled with incredible features from J. Cole, Drake, Gunna, Future, A$AP Rocky, Post Malone, Strick, T-Shyne, Juice WRLD, Travis Scott, Doja Cat, Mac Miller, and more. These features helped make the lengthy 20 song album with an hour and three minute run time. 

Although the many features may have taken away from the original purpose of the album. 

“I always try to be different and switch things up, and with this album I want to merge rap and punk rock together. I got a lot of influence from Wayne and Kanye,” said Thug, in an interview for Complex.

This album ended up coming off similar to Lil Wayne’s “Rebirth” album, an attempt to change directions that ended up not being much different than the rest of his discography. 

Thug went for a mix of trap bangers such as “Bubbly”, featuring Drake and Travis Scott and softer guitar beats in songs like “Recognize Real,” featuring Gunna. While Thug is familiar with slower guitar beats, as that was a lot of his 11th studio album “Beautiful Thugger Girls,”  he performed well on these beats during “Punk.” 

The collection of songs are being supported by fans as many of the songs are appearing on the Billboard 100 list. Thug’s album debuted No.1 on the Billboard 200s list, the album sold 90,00 units first week with 5 songs landing on the Billboard 100 list, the top one being “Bubbly” which peaked at number 20.

On the solo tracks is where Thug shined the most though. Thug cycles through different personas as he goes from the pre-fame dreamer, the family man, the lover, the affluent rapper.  On the track “Road Rage” he talks about stardom taking over his life and not being able to be as involved with his family as he would like. On “Faces” he talks about the pros of being a superstar artist. On “Dropping Jewels” he talks about his upbringing being rough and that he’s grateful his kids will never have to live through that. On “Fifth Day Dead” Thug goes more in depth on the things he had to go through as he talks about the deaths of his childhood friends. 

As he comes in to own, he is who he is and who he once was.