The thing about being a gangster is that nobody is ever gangster enough — at least in the eyes of other gangsters. Or white kids who watched too many VladTV interviews about gangsters being gangsters. Young Thug got a proper education after getting accused of being a snitch last week. The snitch-shame fest began after a video of Thugger allegedly dry snitching on a friend hit the web. Never mind that the person he named, PeeWee Roscoe, had already been sentenced for a crime Thug was barely even discussing. Nevermind that Roscoe himself defended Thug. By the rigid rules of the street, Thugger told, and despite recently being the focus of a literal R.I.C.O. investigation, finally had his street cred under question. Shitty as it is, it's the logical conclusion of a race without victors — a toxic, socioeconomically driven sprint to the penitentiary. Or the graveyard. Or, perhaps worst of all, the trending topic section. It's a contest revolving a nebulous, yet strictly enforced idea of being a real nigga. So then, it's bleakly ironic that it's all so fragile.
Unfortunately, few embody that frailty like Young Thug. For weeks and months leading to his own street judgment day, Thugger had subtweeted Gunna for allegedly snitching on him; Gunna was arrested in the same ill-advised YSL RICO case as Thug. But Gunna took an Alford plea deal in December 2022, which stipulated that he could be released from jail if he admitted that YSL was a gang. Naturally, he did just that. Although one of the conditions of the deal is that it couldn't be used in the trial against Young Thug, that didn't stop the Atlanta rap community from ostracizing Gunna. Of all the A and B-list Atlanta rappers Gunna collaborated with before jail, only Offset has jumped on a song with him since he was released. And if Thugger didn't orchestrate the exile, he sure didn't tell his friends not to enforce it.
In newly leaked jail phone calls, Young Thug sounds largely unequivocal in condemning Gunna for his actions. Except for when he tells 21 Savage that, if he comes out and supports Gunna after people like Lil Durk and Lil Baby had already dissed him, it would be like he was spitting in their face. Depending on who you are, you might understand where Thug is coming from. But Thug's logic here is flimsier than all the songs he's dropped since getting out of jail: Being a real nigga is either important or it isn't. The street code is supposed to be an immutable law — not the fickle whims of an 8th grade bully. And make no mistake: If you call somebody a snitch just because your friends did it, you're no more solid than a 13-year-old who started smoking because the cool kids promised him a seat at the cool table. Following these allegations, and leaked jail calls where he talks shit about basically every rapper he's ever known, it's unclear how long Thugger will still get to sit there.
Up to this point, though, Thugger's been kicking it at T.I.'s table. Maybe he can ask Tip how to deal with snitch allegations. After all, Tip's faced them, too. After testifying in the trial against the person who murdered his friend Philant Johnson in 2006, T.I. was forced into defense mode. His reasoning was good enough in a normal sense; he was subpoenaed. If there were a literal credit system for bad deeds and acts of toxic masculinity, T.I. would've been fine. He'd been arrested several times for selling crack cocaine back when Jabo Jeans were still cool. In 2007, he was arrested for buying enough guns to literally free Palestine. You could argue he defined, if not invented, trap music. He was doing the right thing. The honorable thing. But that didn't matter. He was being called a snitch. It was only a letter from Black Mafia Family cofounder Demetrius “Big Meech” Edward — and the absence of Twitter and Instagram — that helped him beat the informal allegations. But, despite running a drug operation so epic that Starz made a whole ass TV series about it, even Big Meech wasn't immune.
Months after Big Meech's early prison release in October 2024, 50 Cent, who executive-produced Starz's BMF series, accused Meech of snitching through a third party to get a reduced sentence. Thus far, “paperwork experts” like 1090 Jake have reviewed the "paperwork" 50 released to prove his point and have essentially found nothing. Considering that 50 only came forward with this information after Meech kicked it with 50's arch-rival, Rick Ross, it isn't hard to see why 50 would engage in this form of trollery. Also, he'd been a victim of it himself. Before he completely eviscerated them in the early 2000s, Murder Inc. accused 50 of cooperating with police and getting an order of protection after he had been stabbed by a member of their entourage. But those claims were never substantiated. For some people, it didn't matter. For Black people, on a molecular cultural level, it feels like it always has.
As clandestine as it all can seem, this street code stuff is actually just an extension of everyday Black masculinity — which is ultimately just the same pissing contest white men go through. You know, just with more poverty and guns and jail sentences. There's a reason why critics uniformly praised Moonlight for showing that Black men can cry too. Ye was onto something when he said "you ain't gotta be heated at every housewarming/sitting here grilling people like George Foreman." Let he who has not stared down another nigga from across the mall throw the first death glare. All that. But these oversized egos and outsized dick-measuring contests didn't come from nowhere.
It feels a little "Blame it on the white man," but you know like … fair enough. It's easy to blame gangsters and rappers for poor behavior. And we can do that. I'll do it. But we can't do it without looking at how redlining and school zone districting and segregation and a whole bunch of other racist shit created a dearth of resources. A dearth of resources creates a life or death struggle for available resources. And barring a massive systemic overthrow, that means the drug trade. That means guns to take control or protect your drug trade. In America, that also means death. Or prison. That means keeping yourself out of a casket or jail cell. That means street codes. That means gangsters trying to live up to them. That means kids trying to be like gangsters. That means even people who aren't gangsters trying to be like gangsters. That means DJ Vlad and Cam Capone and Adam22 have empires based on people's morbid obsession with Black Death. That means social media judges and juries. That means Young Thug is a snitch. That means there's no escape.
From the suburbs to the heart of the ghetto, Black folks with even the vaguest connection to the streets find themselves in an impossible game of Keeping Up With the Jenkinses. Before an interview five years ago, I remember a rapper explaining how Tupac wasn't actually tough because he didn't know the two men he shot were police officers. In an interview from earlier this year, Wack100 tried to explain why Big Meech wasn't technically a gangster. Which of course, would mean that no one is a gangster. It’s a calculus with a shapeshifting formula. A teleporting goalpost with referees that each think they’ve got the proper rulebook. Even Young Thug can’t understand it. You can see the disconnect when he tweets. You can hear it when he talks.
In another leaked jail call, Thug explains how Pierre "Pee" Thomas allegedly became a snitch and how that was why Gucci Mane had allegedly dropped him from his record label. When the woman on the phone asks Thug why Gucci, the street nigga Final Boss of Atlanta, was still friends with Pee, Thug paused to find an answer: "GuWop went to jail, and I guess he just goddamn turned soft.” Maybe Thugger should too.