Rapper Young Thug releases ‘Business is Business’ album while in Fulton jail awaiting RICO trial

ATLANTA — Rapper Young Thug has been in the Fulton County Jail for over a year and still found the time to release a new album.

[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]

The album, “Business is Business,” was released on June 23 at midnight with 15 tracks and features from Drake, Lil Gotti, Lil Uzi Vert, 21 Savage and others.

The project, which was executive produced by Grammy-nominated producer Metro Boomin, appears to feature a jail phone call between Young Thug and Drake.

The album cover shows Young Thug with right other individuals in a courtroom, possibly alluding to the current Young Slime Life Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act case.

In May, Young Thug was taken to the hospital for a second day in a row after feeling sick before court proceedings, according to the judge presiding over the trial.

RELATED STORIES:

• Atlanta rapper Young Thug taken to hospital for 2nd day in a row for chest pains
• ‘Sizeable’ amount of drugs found on defendant as screams caused chaos during YSL trial, Sheriff says
• Chaos erupts in courtroom at Young Slime Life trial as defendant starts screaming from holding cell
• Here are the people facing charges in the indictment that includes rapper Young Thug

This album comes a week after label mate, rapper, and former co-defendant Gunna released his album “A Gift & a Curse.”

Young Thug, whose real name is Jeffery Williams, along with 26 others was arrested in May 2022 in a sweeping gang indictment that claimed YSL is a violent criminal street gang that has committed multiple murders, shootings, and carjackings over the course of a decade. Prosecutors said that the rappers promoted the gang’s activities in songs and on social media.

In his statement back in December 2022, Gunna said that when he joined YSL in 2016, he didn’t consider it a gang, but “more like a group of people from metro Atlanta who had common interests and artistic aspirations. My focus of YSL was entertainment -- rap artists who wrote and performed music that exaggerated and ‘glorified’ urban life in the Black community.”

Gunna said he cherishes his association with YSL music and always will.

Young Thug remains in jail. Trial proceedings have started, but jury selection is still not complete, despite proceedings starting in January.

[SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]

IN OTHER NEWS:

Students, parents fight to keep Atlanta Public Schools superintendent on the job with petition Channel 2 Action News first reported in June that the board is not going to renew its contract with Dr. Herring in 2024.

©2022 Cox Media Group