‘Stoner’: The hip-hop icon that inspired Young Thug’s hit
It doesn’t take a genius to know what Young Thug‘s ‘Stoner’ is about. Although he had been around for some years already, the Atlanta rapper released his first commercial single in 2014, which was all about his beloved weed.
Over the course of the track, Thugger raps about marijuana, lean, molly and ecstasy while admitting he’s a stoner. He raps in the second verse, “Everybody stoned, weed, lean, molly, E/ Every time I walk inside the club, I see everybody looking/ You know I’m a stoner, I love drugs and I can’t never be tooken.”
‘Stoner’ was partly inspired by Fabo, a member of the Atlanta group D4L, best known for their hit single ‘Laffy Taffy’ in 2005. The song reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and appeared on their only album, Down for Life.
Thug repeats the line, “I tell that bitch, I feel like Fabo,” four times throughout the first verse, paying tribute to the rapper who is known for his drug use. Thug once snuck into the nightclub Club Crucial to see D4L perform live, telling The Fader, “Damn, I used to want to be like D4L. Everybody who rapped, I wanted to be like. Pretty sure I don’t want to be like them now, though.” He also paid tribute to the group by featuring on Drake’s ‘D4L’ from Dark Lane Demo Tapes.
‘Stoner’ has over 39 million streams on Spotify and 22 million views on YouTube. It was recorded in just 15 minutes after producer Dun Deal brought Thug to the studio and played him some beats. The beat wasn’t even complete at that point, so Thug picking it out gave him the motivation he needed to finish it.
“I’ve known Thug since he was around 17, 18,” he told Complex. “I had a studio over in downtown Atlanta, and Thug was just a kid coming through and he was interested in rapping, so I took him on and we started working. He’s always been really, extremely talented so we always had a good work relationship. I never know where I’m going with my beats until they’re finished. So I was just making the beat. It wasn’t originally for Thug, I didn’t know who it was going to be for. But I called Thug to the studio one day with some beats in mind for him. When he came to the studio, the first beat he picked out was that one. The beat wasn’t finished at the time, so I went in and finished it.”
Young Thug, who battled a lean addiction, was once hospitalised for over two weeks and nearly lost his life after suffering liver and kidney failure. “So, I kinda just stayed in the bed and I was like, ‘Yo call the ambulance. I can’t move my body.’ Then later, when the ambulance came, I couldn’t get out of the bed,” he recalled to Rolling Stone.
“They had to get me out of the bed, basically. I felt like my whole body was numb and I couldn’t move. I went to the hospital and I had found out that I had liver and kidney failure. And I kinda had sorta passed away, like, I kinda died. I was in the hospital for like 17 days. I left the hospital, my mom didn’t trust it.”
He added, “So, I left the hospital, went to another hospital, they was like, ‘Man, you got liver and kidney failure. You supposed to be dead. Basically, you’ve been dead.’ I’ve been killed before.” Giving some advice to fans, he said, “Drugs aren’t good, don’t do drugs.”