Rich Homie Quan, Young Thug and the promise of Rich Gang : NPR

This June, during the ongoing RICO prosecution of Atlanta rapper Young Thug and his label YSL, a former Hertz employee named Ira Singleton was called to testify about a rental car used in one of the crimes alleged in the case’s 56-count indictment. Being under oath seemed to compel him to corroborate an equally pressing truth. He did not know Thug personally, Singleton explained, but back in 2015 he knew of him, for a very specific reason: “ ‘Lifestyle’ had just dropped. Everybody knew that song. Banger,” he said. The truth and nothing but the truth, indeed.

More than a banger, the 2014 alien pop hit “Lifestyle” served as the fusion-dance initiation for the greatest duo that never was. Linking the emergent Thug with fellow swashbuckling MC Rich Homie Quan, the song turned yipped and squalled chants into a swirling tempest, its raw excitability like watching kids in a money booth. Beneath the frolicking energy was resolution — all that had been relinquished to achieve the lifestyle in question and the “can’t stop, won’t stop” mentality spurring them forward. The buoyant London on the Track-produced song, which unveiled a new iteration of Cash Money mogul Birdman’s Rich Gang passion project, really did feel omnipresent as it charged toward platinum certification, confounding many in the moment but teasing a new wave. In hindsight it feels like the big bang for a galaxy of ultrasonic rap that would take shape in the years to come, impenetrable to listeners of a certain age. But it was also the entry point into an improbable one-shot alliance, proof of concept for an all-time pairing and a lost masterpiece they would create together.

Rich Homie Quan died on Sept. 5 at 34, a startling and devastating loss for many reasons, but chiefly because it underscored just how underappreciated he had become. It’s easy to forget how special and influential he was, a reality both underlined and obscured by his proximity to Thug, a nexus being who forced listeners to rewire their brains for his signals. Though Thug and Quan could often feel like kindred spirits portaling in from another dimension, their union was unlikely, the product of an attempted monopoly-like consolidation of power by the hard-hustling label head who put them together. The back-channeling that led the duo to take up the Rich Gang banner culminated in the stunning one-off mixtape Rich Gang: Tha Tour Pt 1, which turns 10 on Sept. 29. As much AND1 mixtape as commercial detour, it was born of a Wild West rap industry in flux, where exhibitions could make or break a career. Artistically, though, it felt as if the 1985 NBA dunk contest was being held on the moon, with two supreme aerialists taking turns defying gravity. Separately and together, Thug and Quan made cases for expected greatness. But it turned out to be a harbinger of things to come for one MC far more than for the other.

Before Thug had warped rap toward his squawked frequencies, there was serious hand-wringing about his commercial viability: too strange to break through, with a name too generic to sell. Those tapped into his early 2010s run of mixtapes were enamored of his colorful erraticisms and versatility, but those same qualities were treated as an aberration by rap classicists. Thug gained traction despite these obstacles, thanks to the single “Stoner” and standout guest spots on Tyga’s “Hookah” and T.I.’s “About the Money,” but his elasticity had not manifested a level of success befitting his obvious talent.

By contrast, Rich Homie Quan had already established himself as a budding hitmaker and hook master coming into “Lifestyle,” reinforcing his commitment to the drudgery of staying the course. A steady string of performances — 2013’s “Type of Way,” YG’s “My N****,” Yo Gotti’s “I Know” and the gold single “Walk Thru,” all additions to a snowballing reputation — displayed a charming, effortless command of earworms that seemed to be growing. But anyone keyed into the storytelling behind the fizzy warble recognized Quan more for his intense work ethic and the challenges he seemed determined to overcome in his songs. You can hear his “Lifestyle” verse as both an emphasis of and payoff for his I Promise I Will Never Stop Going In ethos. “I do it for my daddy, I do it for my mama / Them long nights, I swear to God, I do it for the come up,” he squeals. He’s grindin’ with no sleep, from Monday to Sunday, for a new day, and you will not take what is his. Linking up with the prolific Thug was a logical next move.

From the outset, “Lifestyle” and its two creatives existed along the fault lines of a fracturing rap discourse: Many challenged its legibility, and thus its legitimacy. Its position as a lightning rod for mounting anti-mumble sentiments, with ‘90s formalists like Snoop Dogg balking at the many Future and Migos adherents just over the horizon, can be summed up in a YouTube video of the actor Tracee Ellis Ross attempting to parse the song’s lyrics, a bit that was played up for laughs. “This does not make sense, young man,” she chides at one point. The case for the song’s indecipherability was oversold (it seems almost quaint now, in the world of artists like Playboi Carti and Yeat and Cochise), and its appeal was lost on many. But the two artists were clearly cooking, and the song fittingly reflected its origins: coming together on the spot, in the kitchen, as one of the first Young Thug made with London before being courted by Birdman, a part-time rapper himself.

Thug’s uncanny, instinctual transmutations made him one of rap’s most exciting new players, but his label situation was extremely convoluted: He’d reportedly signed a 360 deal with Atlantic for less than $50,000, despite already being in a production deal with 1017 Records. The release of a highly anticipated mixtape, #HiTunes, never materialized, and the rapper was seen as high-risk. Ever the audacious venture capitalist, Birdman saw only opportunity, and flew Thug and London out to Los Angeles. “He looks to me like an animal locked in a cage, ready to eat the world up,” Birdman said of his new prospect. In the midst of this attempted uncaging, Thug had reunited with Quan, a friend from middle school, who was now marking out territory and dealing with his own label pressures. Despite reports that he’d signed with Def Jam, Quan maintained his independence. (“My momma asks me!” he told Billboard in 2013. “She’s like, ‘Quan, you ain’t signed?’ I be like, ‘I haven’t signed yet Momma. If I signed, you wouldn’t still be working.’”) Both artists had found themselves in the orbit of Gucci Mane, mixtape legend and tireless local A&R, and were working on a project together — and Birdman, seeing the possibility of such a partnership, wanted to be added to the mix. He pitched himself to them as an angel investor, the kind of broker who could use his history of godfathering young talent (from Juvenile and Lil Wayne to Drake and Nicki Minaj) to smuggle two oddballs onto the radio. In turn, he would have a direct line to the next generation of stars. He presented this as a personal, almost holy mission, as he’d later tell XXL: “I feel like to build them, I have to let people see the potentials they really have because I don’t think people know what they have. I’m in the backfield and I hear this. If you don’t hear it, you won’t know what I feel.”

Birdman was, honestly, underselling: What he was feeling was an overwhelming magnetic force, the one he likely felt when Wayne first walked into his office in 1991, and right then it was just the jolt he needed. Before Thug and Quan entered the picture, Rich Gang had been a loose concept centering the Cash Money boss, a supergroup where both “super” and “group” were ill-defined, and its all-star efforts hadn’t amounted to much. Founded in 2013, the original vision mixed members of his Cash Money stable of artists — by then a chaotic lineup including Bow Wow, Busta Rhymes, Kevin Rudolph, Mystikal, Movado and Paris Hilton — with guest artists seemingly picked at random: R. Kelly, Limp Bizkit, French Montana, Flo Rida, Kendrick Lamar. The songs were designed as showcases, but came out feeling more like runoff from the YMCMB factory. That year, two middling projects were released under the name: the mixtape Rich Gang: All Stars, led by label castoffs Ace Hood, Mack Maine and Tyga, and a self-titled debut bloated with posse cuts. Rolling Stone critic Jon Dolan referred to the latter as “a crowded party where you don’t get to talk to anyone as long as you’d like.”

In Thug and Quan, Birdman recognized an answer to his Rich Gang problem. He started calling himself their mentor, treating them like his artists despite their sensitive label situations, and baldly professed a desire to link them up with the star Young Money trio of Wayne, Drake and Nicki. To him, there was a clear benefit in selling them as a package jointly representing the future: “I just thought by them being together, it would be a stronger impact and then they still can do their solo things,” Birdman said in an MTV News interview that September. Quan echoed the sentiment: “It’s not like we’re trying to compete,” he told The Fader. “We both want to be the best at what we do, but we still want to help each other. Two voices are always better than one.”

That idea of competitive synergy is what powers Rich Gang: Tha Tour Pt. 1. The tape has the feel of rivals becoming teammates, bonding over a shared approach to the game. Rarely have two breakout stars sounded more in tune with themselves or one another, separate yet aligned in the same direction. It’s a kinship Quan framed as fraternal: “Thugger, that’s my brother / Same mother, different daddy,” related but not quite yoked. Quan seemed sentimental even at his most aggressive, and the unsteadiness of his tremulous voice underscored a soft-centered interiority. Thug was unsteady in a different sense, his nonstop, dizzying motion hinting at a creative impetuousness that wasn’t so much inconsistent as simply self-assured. They both deployed singsong autotuned flows, but from different dispositions: Quan was hunkered in, down to earth, while Thug spiraled off into the atmosphere. There was a palpable tension in the former’s raps that seemed to perfectly offset the zaniness emanating from his accomplice.

Released June 5, 2014, “Lifestyle” bridged the gap between Thug’s fluidity and Quan’s focus. A few months later, the two popped up together again on Travis Scott’s “Mamacita,” further defining the dualistic relationship between them: Quan smooth and serenading, making the pursuit of excellence sound like romance, Thug clipped and chirping, punching in with flurries of piercing noise. The difference in their approaches is in the distance between their philosophies: Thug moves with the herky-jerky spontaneity of a dragonfly, where Quan has the measured gravitas of someone more rehearsed (as he puts it in his verse, “I’m still practicin’, so you know I’m gettin’ greater”). When Tha Tour Pt. 1 finally dropped that September, it seemed primed to put the idea of controlled chaos to the test. The tracklist swings from solo songs to collabs and back, anchored by melancholy production from London, Dun Deal, Goose, Isaac Flame, Wheezy and Mike WiLL Made-It. Birdman periodically interjects, as is his nature, inserting himself into a conversation he isn’t really part of, but the momentum goes unhindered. The two headliners take up the Rich Gang mantle as if it is their own.

Being unrestrainable was a sensibility that Quan and Thug shared, but Thug’s solo turns on Tha Tour Pt. 1, despite their explosiveness, are marked by a sense of suspension. Songs like “Givenchy” and “See You” are among the most graceful in his canon, while the yowled chorus of “730,” the fired-off ad-libs of “Imma Ride” and the amphibian flows of “Keep It Going” play to his trademark volatility. Quan’s solos, meanwhile, are charged by pathos, full of striving and paranoia. There’s the bristling “War Ready,” which seems both reluctant and willing in the face of incoming threats, and the self-starter anthem “Everything I Got,” which chugs on despite haters at every turn. Practice clearly manifests in his technique, but there is something intuitive about his grasp of pain’s hardening effect, the way his off-kilter inflections could imply apprehension or determination. He knew his way around a melody — many of his hooks and verses are as peculiar as they are pristine, bending and wobbling in enticing ways without losing their robustness — but just as impressive are the shapes he draws out of those tunes. On “Milk Marie,” he is like a skywriter, looping and flipping, his flight pattern dictating the range and thickness.

Tha Tour Pt. 1 came right in the middle of an impeccable Quan run that extended through 2015 with his biggest hit, “Flex (Ooh, Ooh, Ooh).” Diving back into his discography in the wake of his death, I’ve been reminded of his ability to make grinding and flexing indistinguishable, to emphasize the labor and sacrifice that comes with going in. He had a distinct gift for navigating the fine line between struggle and comfort, how moving from one to the other leaves a stain that can’t be blotted out and pushes you to never turn back. On “Hate I,” after rapping about his come-up out of poverty, he points to his inspirations: his nieces and cousins, and the late granddaddy for whom he vowed to keep getting paid. There is a sense, on Tha Tour Pt. 1 and beyond, that all pleasure is a bit bittersweet. “They mad ‘cause they cannot stop me,” he raps on “Flex.” “Boy, stopping is not a option — I can’t help it ‘cause I got it.”

It is in the moments where Quan and Thug work in tandem that the full force of their abilities becomes transcendent, as if spurred to not let the other down. Quan infamously called their partnership the best collab since OutKast — heresy to many, but vindicated by the way they balanced one another and by the sheer extent of their imaginative maneuvers. Quan ad-libs enthusiastically during the Thug verse on “I Know It,” which builds to a flexing premonition: “I’m a shootin’ star, baby girl, go ahead and make your wishes.” They rally back and forth on “Bullet,” mirroring each others’ cadences. The crown jewel is “Flava,” the sole song on Tha Tour Pt. 1 that features all three major players, and across its nearly six minutes, as the beat builds and breaks down, each rapper takes a turn demonstrating what all the hype was about in the first place.

In the aftermath of Rich Gang: Tha Tour Pt. 1, Young Thug and Rich Homie Quan ended up on very different paths. Thug, to Birdman’s prediction, did eat the world up — one of the most dynamic rappers of the last decade, he’s landed 10 albums in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200, including three No. 1s, and become a crossover pop success thanks to collabs with Camilla Cabello, Post Malone, Drake and Travis Scott. After “Flex (Ooh, Ooh, Ooh),” Quan’s career stalled. He ended up in a stalemate with his label, went dormant, and returned to a new rap order he’d helped shape but which had passed him by, with iHeartMemphis’ 2015 single “Hit the Quan” as the only real monument to his influence. In 2018, Quan finally released his debut album, Rich as in Spirit — which, I wrote at the time, countered the narrative that he was a rising star gone bust, staking a claim to his place in the autotuned rap lineage in the process. In reflective songs that seemed to find possibility in how far he’d come, he not only showed off a preternatural perceptivity that was poignant and accessible, but foreshadowed just how much more he could accomplish with such a singular sound and drive. I’ve always thought of Rich Gang: Tha Tour Pt. 1 as a demonstration of how close Quan was to being in league with the best in the world, and how often artists’ fortunes are dictated by the way their careers are managed. A few different moves behind the scenes, and the roles of two co-billed stars’ could have been reversed.

Regardless of what came after, Tha Tour Pt. 1 was a herald of what was to come in hip-hop. Auto-Tune’s reign was already in full swing, but the tape prompted a particularly garbled strain that dominated the next decade, worming its way into the Top 40. You can hear impressions of Thug and Quan everywhere. One-off mixtape team-ups became the norm for low-stakes exhibitions, mini-aggregations of solo songs and collabs like Drake and Future’s What a Time to Be Alive, Drip Harder by the Thug acolytes Lil Baby and Gunna, or 21 Savage and Offset’s project with Metro Boomin, Without Warning. (Thug himself did two more with Future and Chris Brown.) But for all the tape inspired, nothing really compares — and there is some irony in a record that helped set the parameters of the streaming sound not being officially available on any of those platforms; it feels like a crucial piece of missing history. The Travis Scott mixtape that features “Mamacita,” Days Before Rodeo, recently got a streaming release for its 10-year anniversary — this milestone deserves a similar restoration.

Rich Homie Quan, tragically, did not live to see Rich Gang: Tha Tour Pt. 1 turn 10, and Young Thug will still be in a courtroom for the anniversary. The planned tour surrounding their team-up never materialized — the artists were already at odds by 2015, egos having clashed when deciding the staging and payouts for shows — and now it never will. Perhaps there never was a tag-team future for them in the first place: “We don’t have any bad terms, it’s just like, now we’re solo artists, you feel me?” Quan told HotNewHipHop in 2017. “I think people forget that we were always supposed to be solo artists; we just happened to collaborate on a project.” At the time, he was clarifying that despite the tape’s series-styled title, a sequel was never confirmed (though I’m sure Birdman had other plans). But I always read those comments more as an admission that the magic of Tha Tour Pt. 1 simply could not be replicated. It was such a specific undertaking, born of such specific circumstances, as spur-of-the-moment and acutely locked in as its creators — lighting in a bottle. Peering into that bottle’s opening reveals an inimitable combo, perfectly linked, frozen in time and forever unstoppable.