Mar 30, 2016

Slime Season 3 is the last in a series of hard-drive dumps following a massive security breach that scattered hundreds of Young Thug songs across the Internet. After Lyor Cohen cryptically announced plans to "bury" the mixtape, Thug literally held a funeral procession at SXSW and eulogized it later by saying, "All good things must come to an end. This is the birth of something new…HY!£UN35," alluding to his oft-rumored debut album. The full eulogy suggested what we've known all along: each Slime Season was cobbled together from stray files in the archives, compiled and released in an attempt to thwart the data leak, which has prolonged the introduction of the Next Gen Young Thug, the one, undoubtedly, with something new in store.

That isn't to say that Thug has been anything short of breathtaking during this run, or that he's grown trite. Some of his best songs have been remastered and released in response to the hack. The projects in this series are all good, but they are arranged without purpose and pushed out hastily in large, uneven packages with botched promotions. The final Slime Season is forged in the image of its predecessors, with Thug turning in charismatic performances over pulsating productions from frequent collaborators London on da Track, Mike WiLL Made It, Allen Ritter, Ricky Racks, and Isaac Flame. But it's a lean, 8-track offering without filler that moves rather seamlessly. The beats vibrate, hum, and strobe and Thug navigates them like a bat using sonar. The prime example of this is the opener, "With Them," which he debuted at Kanye West's The Life of Pablo listening party at Madison Square Garden, where the reverb from his tumbling cadences lingers into pockets of empty space.

The Slime Season series has found Young Thug settling into a particular set of vocal tics. He sometimes defers to specific tendencies, like leaning on ad-libs as structural pillars. Inside the darker, more open beats, he packs syllables together like putty then gently pulls at them. This is as close to autopilot as he gets. Luckily, it is nearly impossible for Young Thug to recycle his sound because there are so many different variables at play; he manipulates flows as well as any of his colleagues and his vocabulary of squawks and yips continue to expand even as his quirks grow more familiar. Something like "Memo," with its mesmerizing melodies, might recall other moments from the recent Thug canon. But then there's a song like "Drippin," which is a devastating display of timing and pacing that even turns his voice into a pure percussion instrument, ripping words off in micro-bursts.

The tape plays like a final installment, going out with a b--- and saving some of the series' best for last. The posse cut "Slime s---," which features longtime Thug associates Yak Gotti, Duke, and PeeWee Roscoe, is something of a theme song. On "With Them," he rattles off simple but effective punches through a nasally mumble. Then there's the standout "Digits," which wraps the YOLO philosophy inside a 'get money' cliche, moving at warp speed before settling into a strutting pace. "I been gettin money before the music, f--- Pandora/ I can do this s--- when I get bored," he says, casually. It's a fitting gauge of his talent and a peek into his current outlook, and the tape is a fitting end to the Slime Season trilogy.
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http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21789-slime-season-3/

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