Nearly six months since he was released from his two-and-a-half year bid for a RICO case, Young Thug has broken his silence. Speaking with GQ, Thug shared that his experience behind bars and part of the longest trial in Georgia history helped him realize how "out of this world" he really is.
"I was actually in court...And I just started looking around the courtroom like, 'Damn, there's a lot of people in here,'" he says. "It's cameras...And even just the things that the judge said when it was over for me. The judge was just like, 'Yo, you got to realize who you are.' My lawyer, Brian Steel, he always told me every day, like, 'Bro, you got to know. You got to know.' And then me just sitting in the cell every night alone, it was just kind of like, 'I'm big.'"
Though Thug thinks he's "too big" for jail, he says he's "not too big for God," who he believes placed him in jail to show him "situations, real friends...how to move and how to be. Still, he tells GQ he questions why he had to go to jail to learn the lessons God wanted to teach him.
He also discussed taking a plea deal, which led to his October 31 release. "Just pleading to something you know that you didn’t do is crazy," he says. "But you get a chance to keep fighting. [You can] worry about the jury’s fate, or you [can] just go ahead now and go home."
Though he "felt peace the whole time" he was in jail, Thug says he doesn't "want to deal with it again." He notes he's felt more peace since his release and has mainly been working on his Uy Scuti album, chilling with his family, linking with rappers and occasionally partying on the side.
Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.