Brian Duricy - There Is No Outside-Thug: Deconstruction and Young Thug [tekst, tłumaczenie i interpretacja piosenki]

"There Is No Outside-Thug: Deconstruction and Young Thug"

My sister walked down the hall and I quickly adjusted my vision and stifled a laugh. Under her jacket was a very gaudy, clearly ancient sweater. “What in the world are you doing wearing Nana’s sweater?” The answer, that a school group she’s a part of was having an ugly sweater-themed meeting that night, gave me the framing I needed. In context, the sweater actually looked good! This became my point of revelation – in context. Under normal circumstances, our grandmother’s sweater would linger untouched by any non-octagenarian. When Jacques Derrida wrote “there is no outside-text”, he certainly lacked the foresight that an interpretation of it and his philosophy of deconstruction would make its way to a discussion on ugly sweaters and a six-foot-something genre-bending, gender-shifting, sexuality-confusing rapper with the John Smith of monikers. But I’m sure that he’d be smiling at the fact that it did

In short, what does this all-consuming phrase mean? Derrida himself defined it as the inevitability of context, and from here we can proceed, sweaters and spitters alike. Why do we wear “ugly” sweaters and why does Young Thug don garb deemed “feminine”? For the former, it is because we are forever in search of a collective acceptance, a group mentality whose only requirement of admittance is a refusal to deviate from an established code of some sort. To attend a themed event and not participate qualifies as justification for levels of ostracization in this context. The purpose, the aim, of any “group” event is just that – to coalesce around a singular identity. This is why, then, Young Thug’s entire existence as an artist is so compelling, because his purpose is to remain memorable

It was necessary to establish the conclusions in the previous paragraph to fully deconstruct Young Thug and his breakthrough 2014. Two early 2014 releases cemented the obsessive tumult of blogs over where Thug would take his sound and his look. The unintelligible Dadaist bent of a significant portion of his verses and specifically his hooks have been discussed by me before and contain a far simpler conclusion than most commentators fumble at coming to: he’s becoming the melody, he’s inserting himself into your mind and refusing to leave. He has removed the middle-man of words. Our relationship with music stems from an ability to remember, and much of this is dependent upon recalling specific melodies – what better way to cultivate a fan base than to become the melody? The purposely-selected ugly sweaters are worn to assimilate. The purposely-garbled “ugly” form of rap lyricism that Thug employs with his slurred sounds is done to the opposite effect – his purpose is to stand out and become incomparable. Critics are too quick to seek out a form of artistic merit for his style, while disregarding Derrida’s immortal conclusion: without this context, of course he is baffling

Similarly, then, can we observe the social aspect of Young Thug. During the summer, while a mixtape with Gucci Mane and his follow-up to 1017 Thug were both met with lukewarm critical reception because of a furthering of the style evaluating above, Young Thug remained in the spotlight as much for high-profile features on songs as for high-profile features on his persona. He proudly appeared in dresses, sported nail polish, and showered his male companions with affectionate names normally reserved for lovers of sorts, all while perpetuating hip-hop’s classic misogyny in many of his lyrics. Never answering for the questions about his sexuality only brought on greater exposure, but a simple answer once again arises with context. Camaraderie in hip-hop is one of the genre’s stalwart traits. He has found a way to market himself via the loyalty that would remain, fame irrelevant. It’s not to say that what Young Thug does is an act, but instead that in holding authentic values and understanding the power of ambiguity, he furthers his own interests without ever straying from how he would act under non-fame-chasing circumstances

Rap music is a perpetual motion machine of context. To enter the genre without understanding its foundational terminologies and endless web of references is to misunderstand the entirety of its messages and purpose. Young Thug’s emergence and confusion over his lyrical intentions and image are inextricably linked to context and the ubiquitous lack thereof in evaluating him. Deconstruction exists as a catalyst for asking the “Why?”s about our world. Everything has a purpose, and that purpose is defined within its context. Every word in this essay exists only in relation to the others under the explicit understanding that others who read the language known as English will be able to ascertain the meaning that the author has intended. Every ugly sweater is pulled over one’s head to assemble a comfortable group atmosphere in the context of desiring acceptance. Everything about Young Thug exists to widen the dichotomous gap between the triteness of his name and what we associate with it. There is no outside-Thug