Vogue magazine called the 2010s the decade when hip-hop’s wardrobe became more openly receptive to femininity (Nnadi, 2019). The thorny process of queering and reconceptualizing the unstable heteronormative image of Black hypermasculinity in African American popular culture neither begins nor ends with pioneering rapper Young Thug — yet he could have become its most important representative, if not for his own reluctance and conservative impulses holding him back.

In 2011, Jeffery Lamar Williams, known as Young Thug, emerged from the poorest parts of Atlanta onto the hip-hop scene. From the very beginning, the then twenty-year-old artist stretched the boundaries of what could be considered possible in rap — creatively, vocally, and sartorially — and, consequently, what could be digested and accepted by listeners. While music magazines such as Rolling Stone and Pitchfork quickly recognized Young Thug’s genius, praising him as early as one of his first mixtapes, 1017 Thug, audience reactions were far more divided. Young Thug faced homophobic slurs for his feminine stylization; traditional rap purists dismissed him for lyrical emptiness; and others compared his vocal delivery to the groans of dying animals (Volksgeist, 15:00).

Rick Rubin says that if the same piece of music is praised by everyone, something must be wrong (Shangri-La, 22:33). And in his book The Creative Act, he writes: “If you’ve truly created an innovative work, it’s likely to alienate as many people as it attracts. The best art divides the audience. If everyone likes it, you probably haven’t gone far enough.“ (Rubin, 2023, p. 194).

T. S. Eliot thought similarly, writing that it is rather suspicious when an artist gains a large following too quickly. “It raises concerns in us that it brings nothing new, that it only offers readers what they are used to, and what poets of previous generations have already given them.” (Eliot,1991, p. 80).

Felix Vodička distinguished between a work’s aesthetic value, which lies in its immediate ability to please and resonate, and its artistic value, which is determined by how a work engages with prior artistic developments and contributes to their progression and enstrangement (Vodička, 1998, p. 33). In this respect, Young Thug demonstrates exceptionally high artistic value in every expressive dimension. It is no coincidence that BBC named him the mostinfluential rapper of the 21st century (Weiss, 2019), as he undoubtedly belongs among them.

Regardless of the waves of outrage and disapproval he provoked, Young Thug continued to contribute to the queering of hip-hop, pushing and breaking through conventions set by tradition. In 2015, he posed for DAZED magazine wearing dresses by Gucci, Ed Marler, and a sheer top by Walter van Beirendonck (Sandberg, 2025).

He also chose women’s clothing for a campaign with Calvin Klein, in which he said: “In my world, you can be a gangster in a dress, or you could be a gangster in baggy pants. I feel like it’s no such thing as gender.” (Calvin Klein, 2016).

In 2016, the mixtape JEFFERY was released with what has now become a cult cover, featuring Young Thug wearing a dress by Italian designer Alessandro Trincone, known for creating pieces that stretch gender boundaries. Showstudio magazine called this cover the main fashion moment of the second decade of the twenty-first century (Bowker, 2019), and it’s no surprise, as it is truly a beautiful work of art.

Young Thug described his relationship with fashion for XXL magazine:

“I don’t care about people understanding me because I didn’t do it for people to understand me. I did it for, like, the weird ones. I did it for the people that’s for that. People that literally live for dressing going to always understand me. And I want to bring out that encouragement to young people that want to do it, but [are] kinda scared. That’s my main reason to do it.” (XXL, 0:34).

In 2019, in an interview with Big Boy, he said that hip-hop has no dress code (BigBoyTV, 25:10), which by 2019, largely thanks to Young Thug himself, was almost true, though it certainly wasn’t always the case. The idea that hip-hop doesn’t enforce a dress code reflects Young Thug’s lack of historical awareness, which, for the aforementioned T. S. Eliot, would have been a serious artistic transgression.

“And this [historical] awareness simultaneously makes the author acutely aware of their place in time, their contemporaneity. No poet, no artist, regardless of their field, attains full significance on their own. Their meaning and value lie in their relationship to dead poets and artists.” (Eliot, 1991, p. 10).

After his experience working with young rappers, Rick Rubin now sees the absence of historical awareness as just another equally legitimate creative approach.

“New hip-hop artists, young artists. They didn’t care about the history of hip-hop. Their predecessors get stressed about it. Usually, to find their own style, they learn what came before. There’s a second option: to ignore what came before and go your own way.” (Shangri-La, 28:25).

A certain sensitivity to Eliot’s simultaneous order is, after all, observable in Young Thug, who initially claimed to be from another planet and therefore the origin of everything.

“I hope they understand me before the next motherf*cker that looked up to me; they understand him—he can express it better and make it feel like he started it, or he did it, or he is the founder—but no, because I am the founder, and I’m ready to lead though.” (Clique TV, 9:39).

This sense that he was creating everything from a blank plate may have been genuine, but it could only have arisen from a lack of historical awareness of other works and artists. Young Thug has always cited only one source of inspiration: Lil Wayne (BigBoyTV, 26:30). However, Young Thug now takes a more measured stance, acknowledging that he is gradually realizing that things he thought he did first already existed before him — he just didn’t know it. One example is Andre 3000 in a dress on the cover of the single Ms. Jackson (GQ, 20:43).

If hip-hop truly had no dress code, Young Thug wouldn’t have had to address questions about his sexuality in nearly every interview, nor would he have been the target of homophobic slurs from the very start of his career. Had he paid attention to what came before him, he would have known that much had to happen for the world of African American popular culture and hip-hop to be, if not fully prepared, then at least more ready to accept deviations from traditional hypermasculine and heteronormative norms.

Nineties gangsta rap was built on physical prowess: the Black male body was meant to be draped in loose clothing, while the female body was sexualized through revealing and tight-fitting outfits (Penney, 2012, p. 325). This aligns with Laura Mulvey’s famous feminist theory on patriarchal film principles and the male gaze, where the female body becomes an object to be looked at (Mulvey, 1975, pp. 11–12).

“However, if black male hip-hoppers were to flip the script, as it were, and reveal their bodies with tight clothes, they might be perceived as signaling an interest in their own sexual objectification. Such a move would violate the established gender conventions of hip-hop fashion, calling the very sexual identity of these men into question. “  (Penney, 2012, p. 326). 

The disdain for anything that didn’t conform to the hypermasculine and heteronormative patriarchal model led African American popular culture to depict queer people and homosexuality as inferior, something to be avoided.

“Black male queerness is portrayed as a weak, disempowering, and ineffective form of masculinity which must be ‘marginalized and excluded from the boundaries of blackness‘ if the heteronormative black man is to retain his strength in the battle against oppression as well as his dominant position over black women. “ (Johnson, 2003, p. 51).

With the arrival of the new millennium, this patriarchal model increasingly seemed socially and commercially unsustainable, a shift reflected in the declining sales of gangsta rap albums that tried to maintain the old order.

The challenge to reconsider and question the rigid demands of gangsta rap came from the now infamous artist, born Kanye Omari West. Through his love of fashion, wearing colorful and form-fitting clothing from top fashion houses, admiration for the gay designer Marc Jacobs, and adaptation of queer musical styles like 1980s electro-pop on the album 808s & Heartbreak, Kanye West significantly contributed to the early queering of hip-hop in the first decade of the 21st century (Penney, 2012, pp. 323–324).

Meanwhile, the fame of the quintessential gangsta rap figure 50 Cent, who continued to use homophobic rhetoric, began to fade. Rapper Danny Brown said that 50 Cent refused to sign him because he wore skinny jeans (Nnadi, 2019). In contrast, the career of Kanye West, who apologized for his earlier homophobic lyrics and expressed support for the LGBTQ+ community, was rapidly rising. Another key figure in the queering of hip-hop—both through the incorporation of queer-influenced electro-pop sounds and in terms of fashion—was Pharrell Williams (Penney, 2012, p. 324).

Kanye West and Pharrell Williams, the main figures behind the cultural shift in the hip-hop milieu of the 2000s, naturally faced homophobic backlash from those seeking to discipline and preserve hip-hop’s traditionally hypermasculine image. One such voice was rapper Beanie Sigel, who stated that in his neighborhood, Pharrell and Kanye would be in danger because of the way they dressed. Sigel demanded a coming-out from these artists so they would stop challenging what was deemed acceptable within Black heterosexual masculinity. His issue was not with Kanye’s or Pharrell’s sexuality per se, but with the fear that their queering of hip-hop style might blur gender boundaries and corrupt young Black heterosexual men (Penney, 2012, p. 328).

Let me remind you the now-legendary photograph of Kanye West and his team taken after the COMME des GARÇONS fashion show in Paris in 2009 (Nnadi, 2019), which later became the subject of ridicule on South Park (Comedy Central UK, 2021).

Kanye West himself repeatedly referred to this South Park parody. “Do you remember that South Park photo? Do you remember how funny it was? Do you think Givenchy would’ve made it to the hood if it weren’t for that photo?” (BBC Radio 1, 11:06). Moments later, in the same 2013 interview with Zane Lowe, he said: “Rap is the new Rock ‘n’ Roll. We are the rock stars.” (BBC Radio 1, 14:10).

And the following years of the second decade of the 21st century brought Young Thug with painted nails and dresses, Kid Cudi in a crop top on the Coachella stage, the fiery concerts of Travis Scott and Playboi Carti, Lil Uzi Vert cosplaying Avril Lavigne, and A$AP Rocky sitting front row at major Paris fashion shows, popularizing the “babushka scarf” look. For blending hip-hop, streetwear, and high fashion, Virgil Abloh became absolutely essential (Nnadi, 2019).

Kanye West said that there are always people who must break stigmas, and Frank Ocean was the one who, through his coming out, stood up to hip-hop’s heteronormativity and opened the door for others (SHOWstudio, 1:00:11). Hip-hop was thus more prepared for Lil Nas X’s coming out and for the emotionally intimate, non-heteronormative confessions of Tyler, The Creator on his projects Flower Boy and IGOR (Nnadi, 2019).

What, then, might make Young Thug problematic for the queering of hip-hop? Emma Nordin suggests that queerbaiting has two sides. The first is when creators imply queer content in their artistic work and then deny it outside the work, and the second is when they promise queer content in paratexts but fail to deliver on that promise within the work (2019, p. 39). Joseph Brennan adds that what is crucial to defining queerbaiting is the creator’s intent—to attract and exploit a queer audience and their emotional and financial engagement for the benefit of the heteronormative majority (2019, p. 8).

For Young Thug and his potential involvement in queerbaiting, the theme of denial is crucial. Whenever asked about his sexuality, he responds by saying that he has six children and is “the most heterosexual man in the world.” (BigBoyTV, 24:55).

He also denies any possible softening of his demeanor in connection with wearing dresses: “I wore this long ass dress because I had a motherf*cking AK-47 up under it.” (No Jumper, 16:41).

Young Thug stopped painting his nails because his son wanted to do the same. “That slowed my career down a lot; I had to step out of the rock star image.” (BigBoyTV, 12:27).

If it was an authentic form of self-expression for his son and other young Black men, why should they have to stop? Young Thug is closing the door that he himself helped open with great difficulty. “But I—I stopped doing it. So if you want to be me, you’re going to stop doing it.” (BigBoyTV, 12:43).

Later this year, in an interview for The Pivot Podcast, he said that he had to give up nail painting and feminine styling, which had been completely authentic for him, because the world wasn’t ready, and he had to leave it to Lil Uzi Vert and Playboi Carti (The Pivot Podcast, 38:30).

I believe Young Thug cannot be suspected of trying to profit from attracting a queer audience, because his statements toward the LGBTQ+ community have been and remain mostly very unfortunate. “Because you know back then you wasn’t no superstar so you just say and do whatever, Now it is like…No. You can’t say that. You can’t say nothing about a gay person now. Back then every song you’d say something about a gay ni**a. No you can’t.” (No Jumper, 14:19). A moment later, in the same interview, he says that Lil Nas X shouldn’t have shared with the world that he is gay, because people would judge him and it could affect how they relate to his music (No Jumper, 15:10).

The most problematic instance regarding statements about the LGBTQ+ community so far was Young Thug’s appearance this year on the podcast Perspektives with Bank, where he spoke very emotionally about betrayal by his close friend and creative partner, Gunna. Alongside cooperating with the court, he added a very strange equivalent.

“Like if I’m look at you like a man and we fuck*ng bi*ches together, girls together, and we doing certain sh*t and I look at you as a man light like well that ni**a and then I find out you gay it ain’t really nothing you can say to me. Imma just look at you like you broke a man code, You broke a code that men with backbone stand up to. You broke that code. You can talk. You can say whatever you want to say. You broke a man code. I don’t look at you the same.” (THE BIG FACTS NETWORK, 2:15:05). Young Thug immediately adds, of course, that he has nothing against the community, whose name he can never say correctly, because many gay people work for him and he is around them every day.

“Thug’s comment not only erases out bisexual men and invalidates the experience of coming out later in life, but also suggests that gay men are not men.” (Rodriguez, 2025). Robert Heasley defines queer masculinity as a way of being masculine outside of heteronormative constructions and offers a typology of these masculinities, in which Young Thug could belong to the category of straight sissy boys.

“These are straight males who just cannot ‘do‘ straight masculinity. The sissy boy presents to others as queer, though that is not his intention nor identity, and experiences a response from the dominant culture, and perhaps from queers, as being queer. These males experience homophobic oppression for their apparent queerness…“ (Heasley, p. 315)

Young Thug could have been not only a musical and fashion pioneer but also a significant cultural figure. Yet he remains an example of how the absence of historical awareness and social sensitivity can lead, on one hand, to aesthetic discoveries, while on a social and ethical level always posing the risk of backwardness. The lyrics of his songs have never stopped being misogynistic. He is a gangster who happens to feel comfortable in dresses. He was undeniably an important driver for the queering of hip-hop, but in his thinking and opinions, he remains a supporter of the patriarchal and, paradoxically, hypermasculine and heteronormative atmosphere of 1990s gangsta rap.

“I feel like I’m not a man if my girl get a therapist. It’s like, damn, you actually call somebody and listen to what they got to say over me instead of just listening to what I’m telling you? I just feel less of a man.” (The Pivot Podcast, 32:12).

The article was written for MOST, a student magazine published by the Faculty of Arts at the University of South Bohemia, and will appear in the next issue. You can read the magazine here.

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Images

[1] Cover of JEFFERY. In: NNADI, Chioma, This Was the Decade That Hip-Hop Style Got Femme. In: vogue.com [online]. [cit. 2025-11-04]

[2] Kanye West and his team after the COMME des GARCONS fashion show in Paris in 2009. In: NNADI, Chioma, This Was the Decade That Hip-Hop Style Got Femme. In: vogue.com [online]. [cit. 2025-11-04]