Beautiful Thugger Girls is a commercial mixtape by American rapper Young Thug. It was released on June 16, 2017, by 300 Entertainment and Atlantic Records. The mixtape features guest appearances from Future, Gunna, Jacquees, Lil Durk, Millie Go Lightly, Quavo, and Snoop Dogg. Production on the mixtape was handled by Billboard Hitmakers, Charlie Handsome, London, Rex Kudo, and Wheezy, among others. Beautiful Thugger Girls received widespread acclaim from critics, and debuted at number eight on the US Billboard 200. It also debuted at number four on the US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums.
Background
On April 26, 2017, Young Thug originally announced that the project would be titled E.B.B.T.G., an abbreviation for Easy Breezy Beautiful Thugger Girls, which was a play on "easy, breezy, beautiful CoverGirl" as the slogan for CoverGirl. After several delays, the release date was hinted a week before release and officially confirmed two days before release. Beautiful Thugger Girls was described by Young Thug as a "singing album", which includes crossovers to musical genres such as R&B, dancehall and country. Although it has been referred to as an album by Young Thug, 300 Entertainment have reported it as a commercial mixtape.
Critical reception
Beautiful Thugger Girls was met with widespread critical acclaim. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the mixtape received an average score of 84, based on eight reviews. Aggregator AnyDecentMusic? gave it 7.8 out of 10, based on their assessment of the critical consensus. Album of the Year assessed the critical consensus as 78 out of 100, based on 11 reviews. Paul Thompson of Pitchfork labelled Beautiful Thugger Girls Young Thug's "most compelling experiment in pop," saying it "strips away all the clutter, leaving his best-developed melodies and most evocative songwriting to date" while comparing it to Lil Wayne's Rebirth. Scott Glaysher of XXL said, "Thug sounds the best he's ever sounded, despite some of the songs begin fairly far removed from his proverbial comfort zone." Daniel Bromfield of Pretty Much Amazing argued "Young Thug cycles through a lot of styles here: lovebird R&B, sensitive acoustic folk, even country. But he doesn't terraform them to his whims so much as try them on for size." Judnick Maynard of The Fader commented that Beautiful Thugger Girls "becomes more than a country album: the music isn't his master, instead he bends it to his will." and is a "testament to Young Thug's constantly evolving creative reach." Tiny Mix Tapess Corrigan B stated: "Beautiful Thugger Girls is remarkable because of its Thugger-ness" but noted that "Beautiful Thugger Girls marks the point at which his pure lyricism, absent an unimpeachable sense of melody and flow, has begun to detract from the project as a whole." The A.V. Clubs Renatio Pagnani stated: "Few artists manage to balance wide-eyed eroticism with genuine warmth, and fewer manage the feat while packing multiple albums' worth of hooks into each song. For Thug, it's just his default mode." Winston Cook-Wilson of Spin said, "The album feels unprecedented within his catalog because it strikes a balance Thug has never quite pulled off on a single project: mixing a unified, album-wide sound with moments of aggressive experimentation and nagging hooks." Exclaim! critic Anya Zoledziowski thought that "Beautiful Thugger Girls—which lists Drake as executive producer—pushes the boundaries of Atlanta hip-hop while adding yet another groundbreaking project to the trapper's discography." Robert Christgau was less impressed in his column for Vice. While highlighting "Take Care" and "Family Don't Matter", he summarized the mixtape as "singsong porn from a purple people eater who's seldom as funny as he used to be and sometimes funnier than he wants to be".
