I feel just like Birdman! Put my steering wheel in the middle!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTUWhcO3KD4
About a year ago now I was travelling across Europe to Japan and I was reading 2666 and listening almost exclusively to Young Thug and Shlohmo and what is my life, how did that happen, it feels so insane, only a year ago, omg. I spent a lot of my downtime thinking very hard about how Young Thug "functioned", it was a nice calming way of thinking. This song has a lot to think about, it is one of the most Young Thugish Young Thug songs.
Like in the intro, at first he responds to it with a sort of genuine naive interest. But then he seems to forget about it entirely? Had the intro not cut off, the answer to "What's wrong with men today?" would have been "They don't think". It is somewhat profound that we don't get to hear that, right? Because this song sorta promotes ignorance or whatever, it's just 100% about how he's gonna make money and all the nice stuff he's got, and how he isn't gonna let up on any of this.
But then if you actually think, not only is every line creative and brilliant, but it functions to enable thoughtlessness, because there is something powerful in the wanton abandonment of meaning. So we get a thing like "I feel like Tarzan/My fuckin' spot filled up with trees/I got a newer plan/Mothafuck the streets take over the beach/With all this fuckin sand/I build a castle and a van". Which at first seems like... completely absurd. Like an application of a certain sensibility (mainly saying fuck a lot) to a totally ridiculous situation. But then it's actually just him explaining how he's gonna stop selling weed and sell MDMA instead.
Or my all-time favorite "I FEEL JUST LIKE BIRDMAN/PUT MY STEERING WHEEL IN THE MIDDLE!", which I still shout whenever I say Birdman, which I say some times when I'm playing Falco. Now this is a reference to a Birdman song called "Keeps Spinnin", where he claimed he had a steering wheel in the middle, which prolly means he was talking about owning this car. But Thugger, by making this a Birdman reference and not a car reference entirely disconnects this meaning. Like, in his mind, Birdman is just a guy who has his steering wheel in the middle. Feeling like Birdman is feeling like putting your steering wheel in the middle. Do you get what I'm saying? Do you see how brazy that is? I'm like a year in and it still impresses me. I still want to make an exhaustive guide to how Young Thug operates. Even now it is a happy, engrossing, calming, idea.
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