Atlanta rapper Young Thug recently released his highly anticipated album UY Scutti, his first album since his release from federal prison at the beginning of 2025. UYScutti only sold 52,000 units in the first week, which is low compared to his previous project, So Much Fun, that sold 131,000 units in its first week. The reason for Young Thug’s album flopping during his grand return to the rap spotlight has very little to do with the contents of the album itself.
When Young Thug was indicted on federal RICO charges in May of 2022, other members of his YSL label were arrested alongside him. This included the popular rapper Gunna, who was considered Young Thug’s most promising prodigy at the time. Gunna, however, took a plea deal that got him out of jail early, leaving Young Thug and other YSL associates behind in jail. In the genre of rap, there is an unspoken code where loyalty is the most important aspect. This loyalty usually means not cooperating with law enforcement. After Gunna made his return from prison, the entire industry turned on him due to Young Thug’s orders, and long-time collaborators such as Lil Baby and Lil Durk turned their backs on him. Despite this, Gunna would go on to have one of the best years in his career after his release from prison by releasing his album A Gift and a Curse. This is in contrast to Young Thug, who only continued to drop the ball after his release from jail.
When Young Thug made it home from prison, he had the world in his hands, but instead, he simply made all the wrong moves. All eyes were on him to release a new album and change the game, like he had done with his previous projects, The Barter 6 and Jeffery. Instead, fans were left with radio silence. For a couple of months, nothing was heard from Young Thug until he teased a new project. He named the project “UY Scutti” after the biggest star in the universe, reflecting on how he is the biggest star in the rap industry. UY Scutti was promised to be released during the summer months of 2025, but Young Thug kept f delaying the album, souring his relationship with his fans.
Avid listeners of Young Thug came to notice at this time in his career that he could not seem to stay off of X Twitter to save his life. Fans received zero music for months while he tweeted about Gunna and other people, seemingly pushing his album to the side. This came to a head when he tweeted a photo of one of the prosecutors on trial, as he called her the biggest liar at the district attorney’s office. Upon tweeting this, a judge put his probation up for reevaluation, putting his freedom on the line when he had just recently gotten it back.
Most of Young Thug’s tweets called out Gunna for abandoning him, and called him out as a “rat” that he hated. He got exposed through leaked police interviews that he had, in fact, worked with law enforcement during his time in jail. Young Thug made the industry turn its back on Gunna. He was also exposed for working with the police years prior on a case relating to the famous New Orleans rapper Lil Wayne. Upon Young Thug getting exposed, his entire fanbase turned on him, labelling him a snitch and a hypocrite.
This put Young Thug in a very tricky spot for his new album. Through more leaked phone calls from his time in prison, where he was heard talking negatively about other rappers that he had collaborated with in the past putting him in a very bad light, in mind of the public. In light of this controversy, he decided to take his comeback album in a more comedic direction.
When the project Young Thug had been teasing and delaying finally released, he made a controversial move that shocked fans and turned most away from the album. The album cover of UY Scutti features Young Thug looking at the viewer, but his skin is edited so that he appears white. While some argue that this is not out of the ordinary for Young Thug, as he made waves back in 2016 for wearing a dress for the cover of his mixtape Jeffery. But in the case of UY Scutti, his reputation was already too damaged at this point for him to be making the bold moves he did. In a now-deleted Instagram post, he took all the featured artists on the album and also edited their skin colors to appear white, which confused fans.
When listeners got over the album cover and the wild promotion surrounding it, they were delivered an album that was mediocre at best, which was riddled with A-list features to try and make it seem like a worthwhile experience. He even released a deluxe that featured leaked grails from years ago in an attempt to boost his sales. The spotlight has stopped shining on Young Thug for now due to the trainwreck that was his new album, and it’s up to him if he wants to return to his former glory of being a pioneer who changed the game forever.
