Jeffery (mixtape)

Background and release

Jeffery was announced on July 9 via Young Thug's Instagram, along with previews of new music. It was initially slated for release on August 16, coinciding with Young Thug's birthday, but was pushed back. The mixtape was accompanied by his decision to abandon the stage name Young Thug in favor of the new moniker No, My Name is Jeffery, or simply his birth name Jeffery. The change of stage name was announced by his manager Lyor Cohen in the preparation for the mixtape's release. According to Young Thug, "Jeffery is all about Jeffery. It ain't even about Young Thug. Ain't no Young Thug songs on there. The mixtape is a straight crossover." On Beats 1, he clarified that the name change was only for one week, unless the mixtape sold 100,000 copies.

The song "Kanye West" (originally titled "Elton" and then later "Pop Man") featuring Wyclef Jean, was released on August 19, 2016. The mixtape release was preceded by a short album trailer released on August 20, which depicted Young Thug being interrogated about his name by the authorities. Each track was named after one of Young Thug's "idols", including Gucci Mane ("Guwop"), Rihanna ("RiRi"), Future ("Future Swag"), and Harambe (the gorilla that was killed at the Cincinnati Zoo in May 2016). The project artwork features Young Thug in an androgynous dress designed by Italian designer Alessandro Trincone, and was photographed by Garfield Lamond. The artwork went viral and prompted a wide range of responses on social media.

Critical reception

Jeffery received acclaim from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the mixtape received an average score of 82, based on 11 reviews. AllMusic's Neil Z. Young called the mixtape "thrilling and essential, one of the best rap releases of 2016," writing that "there's enough freshness here to make it his most exciting and mainstream release to date." Daniel Bromfield from Pretty Much Amazing described it as "a more satisfying major-label rap album than most mixtape-bred rappers ever make," asserting that "despite being more extreme in many ways than his prior work, Jeffery is his poppiest tape since 2014's Tha Tour with Rich Gang." PopMatters critic Brian Duricy stated that "as a collection of songs, it's his most realized set to date." Rolling Stone's Jody Rosen stated that "it's Thug's own sound that predominates: the heroic howls, rasps, mumbles and wheezes of a man who is as captivating a vocalist as any in pop."

For MTV News, Meaghan Garvey wrote that "Jeffery, like ATLiens 20 years prior, has that unqualifiable, absolute feeling of arrival," describing it as "irrepressible, bursting with uncannily memorable one-liners and dynamic experiments in flow and cadence over beats that, attached to a more easily marketable rapper, could be obvious radio hits." Robert Christgau wrote in Vice that Young Thug "makes black comedy out of irrepressible sound," stating that "his hoohoos and melismas and blahs and mwas and frogcroaks and put-puts are the message." Pitchfork's Sheldon Pearce described it as "rangy and stunning, an exciting new curve in the fascinating Young Thug arc," stating that "Thug understands the modern pop song construction better than anyone: anything and everything can be a hook." In a less enthusiastic review, Lanre Bakare of The Guardian described it as "a mixtape that features gems among run-of-the-mill trap fodder" while praising the single "Pick Up the Phone" as "an example of all the things Young Thug excels at coming together on one track."

Commercial performance

Jeffery debuted at number eight on the Billboard 200, and number five on the Billboard's Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, with 37,000 album-equivalent units and sold 18,000 copies in its first week. This is Thug's third debut in the top 40 of 2016, reports according to Billboard, this also was his second in the top 10. In February 2016, I'm Up entered the chart at number 22, and Slime Season 3, which was released at the end of March 2016, debuted at number seven.

Track listing

Notes