Song You Need: Young Thug’s UGK monster mashup

The FADER’s “Songs You Need” are the tracks we can’t stop playing. Check back every day for new music and follow along on our Spotify playlist.

This past Friday, Young Thug dropped Business Is Business, the first full-length album he’s released since his May 2022 arrest and indictment on RICO charges. He remains in Cobb County Jail, with the long and chaotic jury selection for his trial ongoing. The project was a joint release from 300 Entertainment and his own imprint, Young Stoner Life Records, which Georgia prosecutors allege is a front for the criminal street gang Young Slime Life.

Gunna, another of the 28 men charged, was released in December after submitting an Alford plea (in which a defendant pleads guilty while personally maintaining their innocence) and dropped his first album since the arrest earlier this month. His name is conspicuously missing not only from Thug’s Business Is Business features list (which includes Drake, Travis Scott, 21 Savage, Future, and Lil Uzi Vert) but also from its lyrics. Though some were eager for Thug to address the snitching allegations against his friend, frequent collaborator, and mentee, the elder Atlanta MC remains silent on the subject — which stands very much to reason, since the songs on his new record are vault tracks, made before he went behind bars.

The project’s pre-recorded nature largely lends it the aura of a loosies tape, far from the most inspired or cohesive body of work he’s put out over the course of his illustrious career. But even on Thug’s worst releases, there are still plenty of gems to celebrate.

One such song on Business Is Business is its second track, “Money On The Dresser.” Produced by Aviator Keyyz, it’s got a beat that could stand alone at a haunted house or in a Scooby-Doo chase seen. Thug is at his best when he gets a little goofy with it, and the lighthearted instrumental inspires two candy-themed bars: “Money come in all different ways, my diamonds Skittles” and “I don’t need no Jolly Ranchers for my syrup.” Sweet tooth aside, Thug has his sites set on UGK and Outkast’s classic “Int’l Players Anthem,” putting the iconic line “Money on the dresser / Drive a Kompressor” to good use in his own song’s hook. Pimp C passed away in 2007, so we can’t know what his thoughts on “Money On The Dresser” would have been, but one can easily imagine him bobbing his head to the new track from beyond the grave and wishing Thugger a speedy release.

Watch the song’s visualizer above, and check out its lyric video below.