“So I just went with it.” He released his first mixtape in 2011, and by last year, he was a major regional star. “Anyone can rap if you’ve got brains,” Thug says. Somewhere along the way, he figured out that he had a seriously marketable skill. I didn’t do shit there but gamble, smoke and f**k.” “No windows or nothing, like a real jail.
“Seven in the morning to six in the afternoon,” he says. P**sy-a** n**a.” He spent the next four years in a harsh juvenile-detention program. “I broke my teacher’s arm,” he says matter-of-factly. “I was going to school so my dad and mom would keep buying me clothes, but when I got out I did what I wanted to do – fighting, all kinds of shit.”Ī few years later, after a dispute over Thug’s classroom antics turned physical, he got kicked out of middle school. “I was in the streets at eight, nine years old,” Thug says. One of his brothers is currently doing time for murder, and another was shot to death when Thug was in elementary school.
Growing up, the rapper (real name: Jeffrey Williams) was one of 11 siblings living with their parents in a housing project that was later demolished by the city.
