US rapper Young Thug freed after guilty plea in street gang case

Rapper Young Thug was released from jail Thursday after pleading guilty to involvement in a criminal gang as well as drug and firearms charges, an abrupt twist to the longest trial in the history of the southern US state of Georgia.

The 33-year-old Atlanta artist, born Jeffery Lamar Williams, was one of 28 alleged street gang members indicted in May 2022 on racketeering and other charges.

Prosecutors accused Young Thug of being the leader of YSL, or Young Slime Life, a part of the Bloods gang, and charged him with violating state racketeering laws.

(FILES) Young Thug performs during the Astroworld Festival at NRG Stadium on November 9, 2019 in Houston, Texas. Atlanta rapper Young Thug agreed to plead guilty on October 31, 2024 in his long-running criminal racketeering case in Georgia, US media said. The 33-year-old rapper, born Jeffery Lamar Williams, was one of 28 alleged street gang members indicted in May 2022.Photo by SUZANNE CORDEIRO / AFP

The underlying offenses in the racketeering indictment included murder, assault, carjacking, drug dealing, and theft.

The Grammy-winning rapper pleaded no contest to racketeering charges and no contest to being a leader of a criminal street gang but guilty to six other counts, including firearms and drug charges.

The New York Times reported that Fulton County Superior Court Judge Paige Reese Whitaker, who replaced a previous judge who presided over the protracted trial, sentenced him to time served and 15 years of probation.

Online Fulton County jail records showed Young Thug was released Thursday in a listing under his birth name. The disposition of the charges was listed as "time served" or "probation" on the database.

Jury selection in the case began in January 2023, but opening arguments were not held until November 27.

During opening arguments, prosecutors said Young Thug's record label, YSL, was a front for a crime ring, and he was the leader.

"The evidence will show that YSL checks all of the boxes for being a criminal street gang," Fulton County prosecutor Adriane Love said.

Love read verses from Young Thug's track "Take It To Trial," saying the lyrics the prosecution had identified had "an uncanny similarity to very true, and very real, and quite specific events."

"We didn't chase the lyrics to solve the murder; we chased the murder and found the lyrics," she said.

The defense insisted that YSL stands for Young Stoner Life Records, a hip-hop label that Young Thug founded in 2016, which, they say, amounts to a vague association of artists, not a gang.

Defense attorneys had sought to exclude lyrics from evidence, saying that "rap is the only fictional art form treated this way."

A rap vanguard essential to the Atlanta scene, Young Thug is one of contemporary hip-hop's most famous and idiosyncratic figures.