Chance The Rapper has called for Young Thug to be released from jail and slammed his ongoing criminal trial as a “circus.”
The Chicago rapper celebrated his 31st birthday on Tuesday (April 16), but his only wish was “freedom” for Thugger, who he described as his “brother.”
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Taking to Instagram, Chance called out the legal blunders in the lengthy YSL RICO trial and claimed Thug should be allowed to fight the case from the comfort of his own home, not jail.
“For my birthday I just wish my brother was home with his family,” he wrote alongside an old video of him and the Atlanta native chatting at what appeared to be a festival.
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“This circus of a trial has had him in custody for over a year and with all the legal errors, jury misconduct and conflicts of interest by the state he deserves to at the very least fight this from home.”
He also heaped lofty praise on Thug as a rapper, captioning the clip: “Top 2 DOA [shrug emoji].”
Young Thug was one of 28 people arrested in May 2022 in the RICO case against his YSL collective, which prosecutors allege is a criminal street gang.
Thug, who faces eight charges, has been denied bond several times and has remained in Cobb County Jail ever since.
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The trial officially began in November and has been filled with errors and drama. Some of the instances include an investigator allegedly sexually harassing a witness over text messages and a witness being under the influence while on the stand.
An attorney recently claimed that the case could last three years before a conclusion is reached.
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Chance The Rapper collaborated with Young Thug on “Mixtape” from 2016’s Coloring Book project. They also teamed up on a song called “Big B’s” in 2017, which was released exclusively on SoundCloud.
Chano previously called the YSL rapper one of his “biggest influences” on Pitchfork‘s In Sight Out podcast in 2018.
“One of my biggest influencers right now is Young Thug,” he said. “He’s really masterful. He engineers himself. He’s super dope and I don’t want to give away all his secrets, but he showed me a lot of stuff.
“And one of the things that has helped me a lot later in my career towards the end of Coloring Book and the stuff I’m working on now is a process called punch cutting.
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“You basically instead of using a pen and trying to write an entire piece, and then attack it on the mic separately, and hope that all the inflections and rhythms that you had in mind when wrote it are still there, you write it by recording it.”
The admiration goes both ways, with Young Thug comparing Chance The Rapper to Prince during a 2016 interview.
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“They been sleeping,” he told Hip Hop Hollywood. “I think they gonna always sleep on him. He’s gonna die like Prince. He’s gonna die a slept on legend.”
