Young Thug’s Slime Language is almost here. The Atlanta emcee announced that his new album will be released on Thursday, August 16, which is also his birthday. It’ll be available to stream at 9:00 p.m. PST on Wednesday and midnight EST, depending on your location.
Generally, albums become available around midnight EST on streaming platforms like Apple Music and Spotify. This has been the case with Thug’s previous releases, 2016’s Jeffery and 2017’s Beautiful Thugger Girls. On occasion, these platforms will throw a curveball at listeners.
Take Drake’s recent double album Scorpion for example. While it was released at the proper time on Apple Music, the album wasn’t made available until 3 a.m. EST for Spotify users, causing mass confusion as to the delay.
Thug has been teasing the release of Slime Language throughout the month of August. He sent snakes to a number of media outlets to promote the album, which is his official studio debut. In addition to the snakes, he sent out an alleged tracklist that mirrored the naming-songs-after-celebrities method he used for Jeffery. Check it out below.
1. “Gunna”
2. “Lil Duke”
3. “Hidoraah”
4. “Dolly”
5. “Lil Keed”
6. “Lil Uzi Vert”
7. “Tracy T”
8. “Jacquees”
9. “Strick”
10. “Nechie”
He later revealed that the album would features guest appearances by Lil Uzi Vert, Jacquees, Gunna and Lil Baby. He confirmed the release date on Instagram, posting a photo of the album cover with the caption: “Slime Language dropping THIS THURSDAY 8/16! Who’s ready?” Earlier this year, Thug released the EP Hear No Evil, which featured guest appearances from Nicki Minaj, 21 Savage, and, once again, Lil Uzi Vert.
Slime Language also serves as a culmination of Thug’s Slime Season mixtapes. The trilogy of releases are among his most acclaimed, according to Billboard. “The Slime Season series, which is already three editions deep and set to grow soon with the coming Slime Language, has been the most lucrative platform for collectors of Thug’s rarest flows, a space in which the Atlanta rapper roams free,” the magazine writes. “Throughout the trilogy, he’s unencumbered by album formats, verse-chorus structure, or even, at times, any human language. The Slime Season series works, in some part, because there’s no pressure attached to it.”
In addition to the trilogy of proper Slime Season releases, Thugger has also released the spinoff/collaborative mixtape Super Slimey with Future. You can download Super Slimey and the rest of the series for free by clicking here.
The release of Slime Language, in addition to Hear No Evil, contradicts a statement that Thugger made earlier this year. In an interview with Hypebeast, he claimed that he wouldn’t be releasing any new music in 2018 out of respect for his deaf brother. “I got a deaf brother. I got a brother that can’t hear or talk, so I wanna act deaf for a year so I won’t put up any new music this year,” he said. “2019 I’ma put out probably Hi Tunes.”
In addition to his own album, Thugger claims that he’ll appear on the upcoming album by Donald Glover aka Childish Gambino.”[Gambino] got in touch with Reese LaFlare, I think they cool, friends or whatever,” he told Spotify. “He told him to come to the [studio]. He said he has a song for me for his last album. I tweeted one time, ‘I bet I be on Gambino’s last album.’ I’m on his last album, it’s crazy. He’s really not making music after this. So in this picture, I was like, trying to be…I was really frustrated that he wasn’t making music no more but I was trying to be cool.”