Sony Music Germany and Music Women* Germany have unveiled the winners of the third annual Female* Producer Prize, recognizing 10 female and non-binary producers across two categories. The initiative, which aims to boost visibility and networking for women in music production, saw over 250 applications this year, marking a 50% increase from previous iterations. With […]

Warner Chappell Music has signed a global publishing agreement with songwriter John Ryan. Ryan most recently co-wrote and produced eight songs for Sabrina Carpenter’s Billboard 200-topping “Short n’ Sweet” album, which marked the third largest debut week of 2024. Ryan also recently teamed up with Thomas Rhett on his latest album, “About A Woman,” as […]

On July 21, soon after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, British pop icon Charli XCX broke the internet—and middle-aged political pundits’ brains—by declaring Vice President Kamala Harris “is brat.”

kamala IS brat

— Charli (@charli_xcx) July 22, 2024

It wasn’t out of the blue; for weeks, scores of chronically online posters flooded social media feeds with edits of Harris set to the songs from Charli XCX’s newest album, Brat.

Harris, who has emerged as the likely Democratic nominee for US president, capitalized on the viral firestorm. Within hours of Charli’s blessing, the new KamalaHQ account on X changed its banner image to the iconic green of Charli’s album cover and posted its own Brat edit, which has amassed over 1.5 million views. This has led many confused, exhausted people over the age of 35 (or so) to ask: What is Brat? Why is this happening? And please will someone help me I was just trying to pay attention to the election and now I feel old?

A good example would be this recent CNN panel:

If you told me 6 months ago that CNN would have a group of panelists discussing how Charli xcx’s 6th album is being a major voting influence in the 2024 US presidential election I’d laugh in your face pic.twitter.com/3elqmXCb1J

— frankie 𖤐 (@360_brat) July 22, 2024

We had a few of our staffers break down what brat is now that it is part of the 2024 campaign. And if you are still worried, don’t fret. Their main conclusion is this: brat is dead. So, you’re safe.

OK, so, I am your stand-in Old Person who just learned about Brat (brat, BRAT?) and am befuddled. I’m scared about a lot of things—but mostly about the future of democracy (which I post about in the comments to my favorite Washington Post articles). So, my first question is: Who is Charli XCX?

Siri Chilukuri: Charli XCX is a pop singer who first rose to prominence in the 2000s as a teenager—she would make great music and post it online. Her real name is Charlotte Aitchison.

Sarah Szilagy: She’s from the UK.

Sophie Hurwitz: Oh yeah. Really important that she’s British.

Siri: She’s from Essex, specifically.

Is she the brat?

Sophie: I think brat’s more an idea than a person.

Sarah: But an idea she strives to embody, especially through Brat the album.

Siri: The question of if she’s the brat, is sort of the existential backbone of the album Brat, it explores themes of who even is a brat? What kind of qualities does that person have? What does it mean to be labeled as one by someone else? Especially as a young woman.

Sarah: That’s so right, and especially reclaiming the word “brat” from the way it’s traditionally used to describe girls and women as spoiled little children.

Sophie: She described a brat as someone who “feels like herself but maybe also has a breakdown. But kind of like parties through it, is very honest, very blunt. A little bit volatile. Like, does dumb things. But it’s brat. You’re brat. That’s brat.” Brat is expansive.

So brat is a good thing that people want to be?

Siri: I think good or bad, those aren’t judgments that she or anyone who has embraced the title are making. It’s more like this is a type of person that exists and then the internet proceeded to say, “relatable”.

Sarah: I wouldn’t say “good”—as in you’re a “good person” if you’re brat.

Sophie: On the album she talks about ripping her tights, being awkward at parties, feeling depressed, feeling jealous—it’s not just this unequivocally good thing. Brat is about living the party girl lifestyle, but also about being honest with oneself.

Sarah: Being brat is definitely fitting for the moment that we’re in. I think a lot of Charli listeners—Gen Z generally—feel like they’re having to function day-to-day while confronting the horrors of reality (housing costs, work, climate change, global politics, etc.).

Siri: The trouble with defining Gen Z language/trends is it’s both so serious and not that serious at all.

Sophie: Right. It’s 100 percent for real but it’s also totally a shtick.

What does it mean then to have a “brat summer”? I hope it means getting engaged in politics to defeat Trump.

Siri: Brat summer really just means embracing those parts of you that are messy, overindulgent, vulnerable, and sometimes arrogant. It didn’t necessarily have any particular tie to politics except for the timing of it all.

Sophie: Yeah. It DIDN’T have a tie to politics…but then suddenly it sort of did.

Siri: It all started with a tweet:

why did I stay up till 3am making a von dutch brat coconut tree edit featuring kamala harris and why can’t I stop watching it on repeat pic.twitter.com/hqcmerD1Pb

— ryan (@ryanlong03) July 3, 2024

What is going on here? There are many symbols I do not know.

Siri: This is the coconut tree of it all.

Sarah: The song playing in the video is “Von dutch,” it’s from Brat.

Siri: The link is to a tweet featuring a clip of VP Kamala Harris quoting her mother as saying “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’ ” She then laughs her iconic laugh. “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.” The tweet sets that sentence to a song from the album and it went super viral.

Sarah: We’re not authoritatively saying THIS is the tweet that started it all, but it was after the presidential debate, when more politicos and pundits began publicly taking seriously the idea of a Kamala candidacy, and posters did what they always do, which is make memes.

Thank you. I found that explanation uncomfortable.

Sophie: One interesting thing: right-wingers tried to spin the coconut tree/the “you exist in the context of all in which you live” quote to make Harris look bad. But that didn’t work at all—people online want absurdity.

Siri: 100 percent, absurdity is the name of the game online. But in this case you’re right that it’s not that absurd. It makes sense that Kamala’s mother was talking about a coconut tree because she was a South Indian aunty and they just talk Like That. My mom says something similar on occasion. 

OK, so, if I am understanding properly. At the moment I was gravely concerned for our nation because President Biden appeared feeble on the debate stage, potentially allowing a Trump landslide, young people were making a video of Kamala Harris talking about her grandmother set to a song by Charli XCX (who is not American) and laughing about it?

Siri: Yes, but her mother. 

Okay. Her mother. And since then, has this kept happening? These memes?

Sophie: I’ve seen more and more Brat memes—as well as criticism of the memes, and even a couple guys claiming that the memes are a CIA psyop, which is a take, for sure. The memes might legitimately be detracting from real issues with Harris’ political history—the way she defended California’s right to seek capital punishment, or how she tried to block an incarcerated trans person from getting gender-affirming surgery—and that’s bad! But I don’t think that means the Brat memes are a literal CIA project. (Am I underestimating the CIA, though?) 

Siri: What’s important to note is that this wasn’t just from Kamala Harris fans, the KHIVE as they are known online. These were from people who during her 2020 presidential campaign criticized her heavily for her past as a prosecutor or her policies in general. There was even a KHIVE apology form meme going around.

Sarah: Yes, so the Harris campaign is capitalizing on what is essentially free digital campaigning. 

Siri: Biden’s unpopularity led to people wanting something different, maybe they something a little unhinged because people now really respond to unhinged energy. And it was funny. Especially after Biden’s campaign ran Dark Brandon into the ground.

I love Dark Brandon. He was so fun.

Siri: Dark Brandon made sense for a minute but a big part of memes is usually that the person being made fun of isn’t in on the joke, once they are it’s less funny.

Sophie: When campaigns/politicians/companies start embracing a meme they also start the process of killing that meme. It has to appear grassroots, or it’s over—people aren’t going to find it funny anymore. That’s what killed Dark Brandon.

OK so over the past few weeks, these Charli memes have kept floating around. What happened after Biden stepped down? Did people stop joking around and start talking seriously about the presidency?

Siri: Nope. They went even harder with the memes.

No…

Sarah: Yes, and the memes entered the whirlpool of cross-memeification, where to understand the joke you have to understand multiple layers. And with apps like TikTok, the process both intensifies and runs faster. Then the algorithms that feed you content based on the content you’ve already interacted with create a never-ending loop of Kamala Harris girlboss edits to various pop songs.

Has Charli XCX commented on any of this?

Sophie: Yes, she tweeted “kamala IS brat.”

That’s great. She’s a Democrat.

Sophie: No, she is British. 

And she’s never been much of a leftist savior, as much as some people might’ve liked to believe that. She had a song on the Brat album that’s at least somewhat about this edgelord podcaster who’s part of this whole “Dimes Square” scene, which is about racism and bad art, I’m pretty sure. Anyway, this podcaster’s career—as far as I can tell—mostly involves popularizing slurs (?), and Charli said yes, perfect, that’s my muse! So, anyway, Brat is not the revolution.

Anything involving downtown New York City I do not want to know about, as I believe in God. What did Kamala’s campaign do?

Sophie: Kamala’s campaign embraced brat. 

Great, and so this is helping with the youth vote.

Sophie: Not exactly. Now we’re seeing some backlash to that—some people are watching kamalaHQ turn their Twitter account Brat green, posting Brat memes, and seeing it as her trying to charm her way into people’s hearts without dealing with the actual policy problems her constituents very much want her to address.

Siri: Part of the thing with internet culture is there’s an underlying nihilism to all of this as well. There’s a strong contingent of young people who really reject the usage of memes by politicians to co-opt youth culture without materially responding to what people are demanding.

https://t.co/gKxgzqZjxz pic.twitter.com/8rjAHiinSX

— junebug (@swirlgirlxo) July 22, 2024

They don’t like that “kamala IS brat”?

Siri: ​​They don’t like that a career politician can use internetspeak to get votes while the US provides support for a regime that is killing people with little to no accountability.

Sarah: Right, a lot of Gen Z might engage with it ironically for a while, and to be sure, there’s probably a sizable base of young people who find Kamala more palatable than Biden and are willing to set aside their moral objections to her policies. But I wouldn’t mistake the memes for genuine support. The leftist faction of Gen Z—the very group Dems are hoping to make progress with, especially now that Biden’s out—is going to see the campaign’s attempts to “appeal” to them as a facade behind which there are no substantive policy changes.

Sophie: In calling Kamala brat, I think Charli put the final nail in the coffin of the brat summer meme. (Of course, discussing brat summer in Mother Jones also kills brat summer).

So I just learned about Brat and now it’s over? I can’t have a brat summer?

Sarah: By the time it makes its way here, it’s already over.

Siri: Anytime a mainstream outlet writes about something it’s over.

That’s fine. Final question. What is a favorite Charli song for people who want to get into her music now? (Mine is “Track 10”; this interview was actually conducted by a 30 year old.)

Sarah: To understand the dark side of being brat, I recommend “Sympathy is a knife.”

Siri: I love “Talk talk”, which is just about yearning to communicate better with someone. It’s pretty universal but especially for anyone who has been through a tough time with a friend.

Sophie: I like “Girl, so confusing”—it’s great for those who are confused, girl or not. 

Since kicking off his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump’s team has tried everything to appeal to Black voters. In February, Trump told a group of Black conservatives that his indictments endeared him to “the Black people.”

“A lot of people said that’s why the Black people liked me, because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against,” he said at the time.

When the former president was convicted of 34 felony charges for attempting to overturn the election, his team claimed that he was being railroaded by the country’s corrupt criminal justice system—not unlike a Black man.

And during his debate against President Biden, Trump tried to rally Black voters by accusing migrants of stealing “Black jobs,” whatever that means.

Now, the GOP presidential nominee is turning to rap and hip-hop artists to win over Black audiences, probably more than any other presidential candidate before him. Many of the genre’s stars are embracing him with open arms.

On Tuesday night, rapper Forgiato Blow, who went viral for a song about boycotting Target’s Pride collection, premiered the video for his track “Trump, Trump, Baby.”

The #RNC2024 is in full swing.

From the VP pick to right-wing celebrities, there’s no shortage of Republicans who are excited for a week of… Trump everything. pic.twitter.com/k3LRn1kCXD

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) July 16, 2024

The video featured most of the hallmarks of the far-right rapper: his giant chain with Trump’s head, a Cybertruck spraypainted with “Trump 2024,” and absolutely god-awful editing.

Forgiato Blow is a far cry from a star in mainstream hip-hop, but his co-star in the video, rapper, model, and alleged feminist Amber Rose, is a different story.

For those not in the know, back in the late 20o0s, Amber rose to fame for dating fellow rapper Kanye West—now Ye—who had his own right-wing rebrand in recent years. But in the 2010s, after she and West parted ways, Rose became a household name in digital feminist spaces for her outspoken progressive politics and activism. In 2015, she organized the first “Amber Rose Slutwalk,” an annual protest to empower women and the LGBTQ community. She frequently called out rape culture and society’s misogynistic double standards in interviews. She even called Trump a “fucking idiot” in 2016.

But her politics have recently, and bizarrely, shifted to the right. Three months ago, Rose posted a photo on Instagram with Trump and his wife, Melania, with the caption “Trump 2024.” Since then, many of her posts on the app have featured her decked out in the signature bright-red MAGA hat or contained a pithy caption dunking on President Biden.

On Monday, she gave a rousing speech at the Republican National Convention, exclaiming that Trump supporters were her people and where she belonged.

“I realized that Donald Trump and his supporters don’t care if you’re Black, white, gay, or straight, it’s all love,” said Rose.

Rose is not the only rapper riding the Trump Train.

Last week, rapper and Internet troll Azealia Banks, who emerged as a Trump supporter in 2023, was spotted at the former president’s rally in Miami. “O Let’s Do It” artist Waka Flocka Flame reportedly told any Biden supporters in the crowd to “get out of my concert” during a show earlier this month.

Both Lil Wayne and Kodak Black, pardoned by Trump for federal weapons and firearms charges, respectively, have proclaimed their admiration for the real estate mogul. And SexxyRed, a St. Louis rapper who said in October 2023 that she supported Trump, has used Trump campaign imagery throughout her “Make America Sexy Again” tour, including a giant MAGA-style cap.

Curtis Jackson, better known as 50 Cent, was even rumored to be a surprise guest at the RNC, after sharing a truly terrifying edit of Trump’s head on the rapper’s body—a reference to a meme circulating after Trump’s assassination attempt. Jackson has said that Black men relate to Donald Trump because they “got RICO charges.”

As the election ramps up, Trump has been courting more of these performers—with help from a fellow fraudster. Earlier this year, Rolling Stone reported that Billy McFarland, who organized the infamously disastrous Fyre Festival, was connecting Trump’s campaign to rappers including Brooklyn’s Sheff G and Sleepy Hallow, who joined Trump onstage at a rally in the Bronx.

Are these stunts winning over Black voters? It’s hard to say. Many Black media figures and social media users have called out the former president and the artists who support him. MSNBC host Joy Reid has cautioned Black voters to do their own research in response to Rose’s RNC speech.

As November nears, even more hip-hop artists may pledge their allegiance to Trump—whether or not it makes a difference at the polls.

Since kicking off his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump’s team has tried everything to appeal to Black voters. In February, Trump told a group of Black conservatives that his indictments endeared him to “the Black people.”

“A lot of people said that’s why the Black people liked me, because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against,” he said at the time.

When the former president was convicted of 34 felony charges for attempting to overturn the election, his team claimed that he was being railroaded by the country’s corrupt criminal justice system—not unlike a Black man.

And during his debate against President Biden, Trump tried to rally Black voters by accusing migrants of stealing “Black jobs,” whatever that means.

Now, the GOP presidential nominee is turning to rap and hip-hop artists to win over Black audiences, probably more than any other presidential candidate before him. Many of the genre’s stars are embracing him with open arms.

On Tuesday night, rapper Forgiato Blow, who went viral for a song about boycotting Target’s Pride collection, premiered the video for his track “Trump, Trump, Baby.”

The video featured most of the hallmarks of the far-right rapper: his giant chain with Trump’s head, a Cybertruck spraypainted with “Trump 2024,” and absolutely god-awful editing.

Forgiato Blow is a far cry from a star in mainstream hip-hop, but his co-star in the video, rapper, model, and alleged feminist Amber Rose, is a different story.

For those not in the know, back in the late 20o0s, Amber rose to fame for dating fellow rapper Kanye West—now Ye—who had his own right-wing rebrand in recent years. But in the 2010s, after she and West parted ways, Rose became a household name in digital feminist spaces for her outspoken progressive politics and activism. In 2015, she organized the first “Amber Rose Slutwalk,” an annual protest to empower women and the LGBTQ community. She frequently called out rape culture and society’s misogynistic double standards in interviews. She even called Trump a “fucking idiot” in 2016.

But her politics have recently, and bizarrely, shifted to the right. Three months ago, Rose posted a photo on Instagram with Trump and his wife, Melania, with the caption “Trump 2024.” Since then, many of her posts on the app have featured her decked out in the signature bright-red MAGA hat or contained a pithy caption dunking on President Biden.

On Monday, she gave a rousing speech at the Republican National Convention, exclaiming that Trump supporters were her people and where she belonged.

“I realized that Donald Trump and his supporters don’t care if you’re Black, white, gay, or straight, it’s all love,” said Rose.

Rose is not the only rapper riding the Trump Train.

Last week, rapper and Internet troll Azealia Banks, who emerged as a Trump supporter in 2023, was spotted at the former president’s rally in Miami. “O Let’s Do It” artist Waka Flocka Flame reportedly told any Biden supporters in the crowd to “get out of my concert” during a show earlier this month.

Both Lil Wayne and Kodak Black, pardoned by Trump for federal weapons and firearms charges, respectively, have proclaimed their admiration for the real estate mogul. And SexxyRed, a St. Louis rapper who said in October 2023 that she supported Trump, has used Trump campaign imagery throughout her “Make America Sexy Again” tour, including a giant MAGA-style cap.

Curtis Jackson, better known as 50 Cent, was even rumored to be a surprise guest at the RNC, after sharing a truly terrifying edit of Trump’s head on the rapper’s body—a reference to a meme circulating after Trump’s assassination attempt. Jackson has said that Black men relate to Donald Trump because they “got RICO charges.”

As the election ramps up, Trump has been courting more of these performers—with help from a fellow fraudster. Earlier this year, Rolling Stone reported that Billy McFarland, who organized the infamously disastrous Fyre Festival, was connecting Trump’s campaign to rappers including Brooklyn’s Sheff G and Sleepy Hallow, who joined Trump onstage at a rally in the Bronx.

Are these stunts winning over Black voters? It’s hard to say. Many Black media figures and social media users have called out the former president and the artists who support him. MSNBC host Joy Reid has cautioned Black voters to do their own research in response to Rose’s RNC speech.

As November nears, even more hip-hop artists may pledge their allegiance to Trump—whether or not it makes a difference at the polls.

It’s the morning of November 28, 2023, and a lawyer gives an opening statement to the jury. He tells a story of a 9-year-old boy who sees his older brother Bennie collapsed on the ground after being shot in the chest. Someone calls 911, but when the police finally arrive, they don’t rush to help him, instead handcuffing the boy’s mother, who is screaming and hysterical, and pushing her to the ground. When the cops finally go over to Bennie, they put a sheet over his face. But Bennie’s chest is still going up and down—he’s still breathing.

“This probably happens over and over but we only know about it because it’s Young Thug and Brian Steel.”

The lawyer, Brian Steel, says that Bennie’s brother would come to believe that “the only two ways he can break the generational hopelessness and despair for his family, himself—and he wanted to break it for as many people as he could who were in this struggle—was to be a professional athlete or an accomplished musical artist.” He chose music. 

The young boy’s name is Jeffery Williams. He was born in 1991 and grew up in the Jonesboro South projects in Atlanta, Georgia, but was displaced at the age of 16 when the public housing development was demolished. He began rapping as Young Thug in 2010. Three studio albums and nearly 20 mixtapes later, he has become one of the most celebrated trap artists. 

But in May 2022, Young Thug—along with 27 others associated with his label YSL Records—was arrested. The rapper is now on trial for a host of charges, including using YSL as a front to run a criminal street gang and violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.

Although he’s not accused of murder, the state alleges that Young Thug rented a car used in the 2015 murder of rival gang member Donovan Thomas Jr. Fulton County prosecutors, led by District Attorney Fani Willis, are connecting this murder to dozens of more recent incidents of gun crime and killings and claiming that Young Thug is the leader and instigator behind the wave of violence. Some of the state’s evidence against the artist comes from his rap lyrics, including bars like “Gave the lawyer close to two mil’, he handle all the killings”—from the song “Just How It Is”—which the indictment describes as “an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.”

For decades, politicians, prosecutors, and the media have incited panic around Black rappers and their lyrics, a practice that, according to some constitutional experts, raises free speech concerns when those lyrics are presented at trial. Reading lyrics out of context, they warn, reinforces racial stereotypes, biases the jury, and prevents fair decisions, reframing the trial around artistic narratives rather than material evidence.

“Prosecutors do this because they know it makes their job easy,” Jack Lerner, a University of California, Irvine, law professor and a co-author of “Rap On Trial: A Legal Guide,” told Courthouse News Service following the Young Thug indictment. “They know that juries that aren’t familiar with rap music will essentially rob the rap artist of a fair trial. It really creates a chilling effect for the artist and has very serious First Amendment implications.” 

Last year, Reps. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) and Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) re-introduced the Restoring Artistic Protection Act, which would create federal rules to limit the ways in which artists’ lyrics can be used against them in criminal and civil cases. The lawmakers quoted a federal judge’s 2021 ruling barring two Philadelphia police officers from introducing as evidence the lyrics of a rapper who was suing them for wrongful arrest. “Freddy Mercury did not confess to having ‘just killed a man’ by putting ‘a gun against his head’ and ‘pull[ing] the trigger,’” the Trump-appointed judge wrote. “Bob Marley did not confess to having shot a sheriff. And Johnny Cash did not confess to shooting ‘a man in Reno, just to watch him die.’”

Willis, who was elected DA on a tough-on-crime platform in 2020, is the driving force behind the RICO accusations against Young Thug and his YSL co-defendants. Her history with Georgia’s RICO statute—an unusually broad version of a legal tool used across the country to combat organized crime—dates back a decade. As an assistant district attorney in 2014, she led the prosecution of 12 educators who allegedly cheated on state tests by correcting students’ answers to improve their scores. Eleven of them were convicted under RICO. Willis is now attempting to use the same law to prosecute Donald Trump and his allies for allegedly conspiring to steal the state’s 2020 presidential election. Meanwhile, Georgia’s attorney general is prosecuting dozens of anti-Cop City activists under RICO, accusing them of using illegal tactics to stop construction of the controversial law enforcement training center.

Enacted in 1980, Georgia’s RICO law expanded state power by, among other things, making it harder for crime bosses to use subordinates to shield themselves from legal liability. The statute gives prosecutors the authority to combine offenses committed by different people if they can argue that the illegal activity fell into a pattern and the defendants shared a common goal, explained Michael Mears, a professor at John Marshall Law School in Atlanta, in a 2023 interview with the New York Times. “It allows a prosecutor to go after the head of an organization, loosely defined, without having to prove that that head directly engaged in a conspiracy or any acts that violated state law,” he told the paper. “If you are a prosecutor, it’s a gold mine. If you are a defense attorney, it’s a nightmare.”

The law carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years and fines of $25,000, giving the government an enormous amount of leverage to push defendants to take plea deals. In a 2022 press conference, Willis called herself a “fan of RICO” because it “allows a prosecutor’s office and law enforcement to tell the whole story.” She later stated, “We use it as a tool so [jurors] can have all the information they need to make a wise decision.”

But critics have accused Georgia prosecutors of abusing the law. The cases can take years to try—jury selection alone in the YSL case took 10 months—and are ruinously expensive to defend. Officials from the ACLU blasted the attorney general’s Cop City prosecution as a form of “extreme intimidation tactics that we need to resist.”

“A lot of people ask me to make Brian Steel and Thug merch, but I’m not trying to get sued.”

“There is legitimate concern that Georgia’s sweeping indictment could form a playbook for other prosecutors and state officials seeking to stifle political dissent,” the ACLU officials argued. Those fears aren’t baseless. Earlier this year, 10 Republican state senators put forward a bill that would further expand RICO in Georgia to punish low-level misdemeanors like loitering and illegally putting up posters. The legislation would also provide for increased penalties if the defendants are found to have targeted their victims based on “political affiliation or belief.” 

The AG’s office declined to comment to Mother Jones, citing the pending prosecution. Willis’ office did not respond to questions.

Perhaps because it lacks a clear political valence—like the Trump and Cop City cases—the YSL trial hasn’t always attracted the kind of mainstream media attention it deserves. Until recently, to get any regular updates on the televised trial, one had to turn to social media, particularly to an X account that goes by @ThuggerDaily. The anonymous author now has more than 70,000 followers, and he supplies them with translations of impenetrable legalese, videos of dramatic testimony, and explanations of all the players and strategies used in the trial. His work has brought national attention to the inner workings of Georgia’s criminal justice system, and it’s been cited by everyone from legal experts to music outlets like Complex and The Fader.

Young Thug’s lawyer Brian Steele has officially been held in contempt and taken into custody #FREESTEELE pic.twitter.com/0Lf4ppCVd9

— THUGGERDAILY ひ (@ThuggerDaily) June 10, 2024

Starting last month, the trial began receiving more intensive national coverage after Fulton County Judge Ural Glanville made a series of inflammatory decisions, including holding a secret meeting with prosecutors and a key witness. When Steel, the lawyer for Young Thug, learned about that meeting, Glanville demanded that Steel disclose how he’d found out about it. Steel refused to divulge his source and was then held in contempt by the judge. That was followed by calls for Glanville to withdraw from the case and by a series of appeals to higher courts in Georgia. The trial is now on indefinite hold until another judge makes a formal decision on whether Glanville should be removed.

I had the opportunity to ask @ThuggerDaily about his perspective on the intricacies of the trial, as well as what it reveals about Georgia’s fight against crime. You can read a condensed version of the discussion—which was conducted over email and has been edited for clarity and organization—below: 

How did you become interested in Young Thug’s music? My initiation was when the Jeffery mixtape blew up in 2016.

The first time Thug really clicked for me was on the bus on the way home from a high school soccer game my team had just won. Whoever was on aux played “Hercules” off a mixtape Thug had just dropped, which remains in my top 10 Thug songs ever. I was hooked on that song but didn’t really check out Thug’s other music until a friend of mine showed me “With Them” off Slime Season 3 the day it dropped. That sound blew my mind and that entire tape resonated with me immediately. That week, I went back and checked out Thug’s entire discography and have been a huge fan ever since.

What’s the story behind you starting to cover the YSL trial? What’s your background (legal, music, etc.)?

I often get asked if I have any background in law or journalism—I have literally zero. Never ran a social media account either. 

I had been a part of a Discord chat of active Young Thug fans for a long time, and when the RICO case first dropped, naturally everyone wanted as much information as possible. But the media coverage was absolutely horrid. Early on, none of us understood what Thug was being accused of doing. There were important hearings almost every month for the year leading up to the trial, but they weren’t streamed online and journalists didn’t cover them, so information was sparse. I took it upon myself to start reading court filings and summarizing them in the Discord server, and eventually, the owners of the Discord made me my own channel to announce case updates for everyone. 

We’d have watch parties for hearings with dozens of people tuning into bond hearings, but there were many that were not available for streaming. I accidentally stumbled upon a document summoning someone from jail to the courtroom with a Zoom passcode on it. I tried to keep it private for as long as I could, but eventually someone else came across the code through the same document and trolled the courtroom by screaming, “FREE THUG,” into the mic. After that, they made a new Zoom passcode and kept it super locked up. I was also checking the court docket every day and was reading and learning a lot about the law—just 6 months prior I didn’t even know what an indictment was. 

Fast forward to December 2022 and news of Walter “DK” Murphy taking the first plea deal dropped. The fans realized how big of a deal this was and we all scoured the internet looking for more information, but there was none. Radio silence. It was insane! I even resorted to DMing his lawyer, but they turned me away. The next day, Gunna took a plea deal. The info coming out about the deal was also bad but in the opposite extreme—it obviously made huge waves on social media, but the details coming out were sensationalized and, frankly, full of misinformation. No one posted the actual paperwork—the main thing going around was the video of Gunna’s plea allocution, where he responded, “Yes Ma’am,”—but I got it a full six hours before anyone posted the relevant parts to social media.  I made one very important connection very early on who was able to access court documents without paying and often before journalists got them. I still talk to this same contact a lot. I can’t really say who, but without them, ThuggerDaily wouldn’t be what it is—they sent me all the documents I was getting early on. Before them, I was paying per page and I’d get them delayed.

Slimelife Shawty aka Wunnie Lee is the third person to plea out of jail in the YSL case and will be coming home today.#yslricocase pic.twitter.com/Iqj5DAZHHh

— THUGGERDAILY ひ (@ThuggerDaily) December 16, 2022

This is when someone from the Discord server, the original owner of @ThuggerDaily, reached out to me. At this point, the Twitter account was an inactive Young Thug meme page with roughly 1,000 followers. We’d already talked about me potentially taking it over and turning my Discord updates into a full social media court updates page, but the wave of plea deals was the catalyst. 

My first official post was announcing Slimelife Shawty’s plea deal, which garnered 40 likes.

When did you start getting attention for your work? I was looking at posts from 2023 that didn’t receive as much engagement as you are getting now.

Honestly, getting attention was gradual and consistent. There are, of course, huge spikes when big developments happen, but I was getting recognition from local lawyers and even YSL case lawyers and friends and family of the defendants pretty early on. However, with the craziness in the last month—between Woody, recusal motions, Steel being ordered to go to jail, etc.—my page doubled in size in the span of 2 weeks. 

I started with 1,000 followers. On the day of opening statements, I went from about 16,000 followers to 20k. Today, I’m at 66k.

Why do you think there is so little active coverage of the trial? I mostly see explainers from mainstream outlets or basic reporting on developments with no added context like you’re doing. What are media outlets missing in their coverage of the trial?

This trial is extremely unique in ways that make it difficult to report. It has hundreds of witnesses and spans a timeline of 13 years with multiple narratives. It’s very unfriendly for traditional reporting as they would have to pay someone to cover five days of court a week for over two years. A random viewer can’t just pop in and understand why the state is asking the witness about a 10-year-old robbery in which no defendant was a participant. Even understanding Thug’s charges and what the state has to prove isn’t easy. It’s just too much. The only digestible parts are the funny clips of court proceedings that really SHOULDN’T be happening.

In June, Brian Steel filed a motion to recuse Judge Glanville from the case. Why are there so many moving parts like the absurd number of witnesses involved, the long jury selection process, and the messy court proceedings?

The state chose to indict 28 defendants in a conspiracy case with 700+ witnesses. It’s now around 200 witnesses after the judge ordered cuts when it was clear how long the trial was taking. That’s the source of most of the mess. Most think it’s working against them, but it’s hard to predict what a jury is thinking. They may have a decent murder case somewhere, but they insisted on the fluff to make it a RICO conspiracy. 

What do you think the state wants out of this trial? Is its plan working?

I think that Atlanta has a gang problem for sure, and this is a performative way of saying, “We’re doing something.” They have given plenty of “dangerous” people zero jail time in exchange for testimony against Young Thug. It’s clearly designed to make headlines instead of making a difference. 

You can’t arrest your way out of this.

What possible outcomes do you see for Young Thug and YSL in this trial?

As far as a final outcome, I have no idea. At this juncture, there’s a million ways the case can develop. However, I am 100% certain this first trial will end in a mistrial, whether it’s now or on appeal. Other than that, too much depends on unpredictable variables such as if the state wants to retry or offer favorable pleas, whether we get a new judge, which witnesses will show up again, etc., for me to make a decent prediction.

What do you think the trial says about Georgia’s criminal justice system and the other high-profile RICO cases in the state?

This trial has shown a whole new crowd of people, myself included, how much power the state has. Violation after violation and constant misconduct has been forgiven under the assumption that Georgia is trying their best. Even people who think Thug is guilty still acknowledge he deserves a fair trial and isn’t getting one. Everyone knows it. Yet we are wasting millions of dollars and years of time while the judge, who has lost control of the courtroom, has little oversight.

What do you think is the importance of having trials televised for the public?

It’s horrifying that this probably happens over and over but we only know about it because it’s Young Thug and Brian Steel. Even in this case, the state has tried to turn off the cameras under the guise of “witness safety.” The drawbacks of public trials definitely exist and I’m sure the jurors dislike social media reporting on the trial, but the alternative is no public accountability of public servants. It’s immensely important. 

You should be getting paid for your work. Are you?

Other than Twitter ad revenue—which is honestly pitiful—no. For a while, I tried to monetize my page by reaching out to hip-hop promo agencies to do paid tweets, but it was a hard sell because my page was so niche. A lot of people ask me to make Brian Steel and Thug merch, but I’m not trying to get sued lol. I’m not sure how to go about monetizing my page otherwise. Hopefully I can be involved in the inevitable documentary somehow and get a check there.