Young Thug – “Worth It” (Singles Going Steady)

Brian Duricy: This is what being drunk on love actually sounds like — woozy while slurring syllables until phrases have double — and triple-meanings and no meanings at all. “Worth It” isn’t Young Thug’s strongest nor most experimental ode (that honor instead goes to Slime Season 2‘s “Raw”), but one of his rare straightforward lines contains a fundamental truth about love: “If this is how I’m feelin’, it’s gonna work.” It most certainly does. [7/10]

Alexandra Fletcher: Nice to see the softer side of Young Thug, as he pays homage to the love he has for his girlfriend. The beat is cyclical and sultry, but not very nuanced. Round of applause for his Young Thug and his girlfriend playing themselves in a VERY steamy video. The visual storytelling feels authentic. [6/10]

Chris Ingalls: I actually got physically ill from the amount of Auto-Tune I was exposed to here. [3/10]

Will Rivitz: I’m personally of the opinion that Young Thug is at his absolute best when he’s going ham, but this kind of blunted take on his pitch-corrected trap is surprisingly great. The song doesn’t bang in the same way that “Hercules” or “F Cancer” do, but that’s fine. It’s impressive that Young Thug can bring down the lights and the mood and still sound braggadocious and serene. Production work is great as always, and the vocals meld with the weird synths sublimely. As everyone else, I’m pumped for Slime Season 3. Thugger can do no wrong. [8/10]

Chad Miller: Has some good lyrics although you might need a lyric sheet to get all of them. There are sweet moments too, but unfortunately the music doesn’t really grab you like the melody does in his best songs. [6/10]

Emmanuel Elone: “Worth It” is like every other Young Thug track that I’ve ever heard. Just like “Lifestyle”, the lyrics are muffled and Auto-Tuned to the point of being incomprehensible, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The beat is laid-back, and Young Thug does do a good job in keeping his flow mellow and smooth to match the instrumental. This isn’t a hip-hop song that people turn to for lyricism or experimentation, but Thugger wasn’t aiming for that. “Worth It” is good mood or background music, nothing more and nothing less. [5/10]

Robert Inglis: Backed by a barely-there beat from frequent collaborator London on the track, “Worth It” is Young Thug’s ode to his long-term girlfriend Jerrika Karlae. “Damn, I broke her heart, now my heart hurt,” he sings. “I don’t know why but I done cut down on that syrup.” If anything, this is the ultimate compliment Thug could pay to Karlae, insofar as his prodigious lean habit precedes him. More importantly, the lyric reveals the blemishes hidden beneath the rapper’s ardour, offering a rare glimpse of an emotionally vulnerable aspect of his persona. As the song draws to a close, Karlae takes an unsolicited peek at her boyfriend’s text message history. Catching her in the act, Thugger seizes his phone and flings it into an outdoor hot tub. “I know she worth it / Yeah, my mama say that she ain’t perfect,” he sings. “But if this is how I’m feelin’, it’s gonna work.” By the time the song’s over, we’re left wondering whether or not his mom is right. [6/10]

Pryor Stroud: Openly devotional to Kanye’s 808s and Drake’s most melodically adroit work, Young Thug’s “Worth It” is another test of the emotiveness of Auto-Tuned hip-hop, which, to be sure, is a test that has already been better pencilled out and perfected by artists that have more to say — and wider musical vocabularies — than Young Thug does himself. Yet the track has an irresistible glide to it. Thug’s words slur together, electronically glued to each other so that they seem to be part of one reverberating cohesion, and the blips of ecstasy slipping off of his tongue make this an example of R&B showmanship that is worth testing out before turning away. [5/10]

Adolf Alzuphar: Young Thug lets his heart monumentally bleed from its seams with testimony about how she has cared for him, with descriptive imagery of how exactly he feels about her commitment, and how exactly he’d promises to show her his affection. His telling us that ‘I’m High’ lets us into the alchemy of the almost Baudelarian love of seedy though fulfilling living we hear. His slurry rapping and its timbre is once the best part of the song; we are let into what feels like honest loving to a very simple but effective beat. [8/10]

Morgan Y. Evans: Kinda sweet that rumor has it Thug’s girlfriend was in the video. “That pussy look just like a cut, a soakin’ cut” is not as sweet. Gross, dude. This video looks like heterosexual branding to lure in dumb people who were upset or turned off that Young Thug crossdresses sometimes. The beat is generic garbage and the flow is turds. This will never be replacing “Around a Way Girl” in the classic romantic hip-hop department or even Bone Thugs in the gentle yet fast flow department. Sounds like Auto-Tuned marbles with generic lyrics about getting head and how bitches are basic and thirsty and he made it so his girl is ballin’ and doesn’t have to work. Yawn. Actually, you will never get these minutes of your life back. Not “Worth It” at all. [2/10]

SCORE: 5.60