Young Thug‘s attorney has revealed the origin of his stage name, and it turns out it’s a lot deeper than it appears.
In front of a packed courtroom on Tuesday (November 28), Brian Steel revealed that “Thug” is an acronym, and a rather holy one at that.
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“What [the name] means to Jeffery is something very personal,” the lawyer said. “It was his pact that if he could ever make it as a musical artist, and help his family, himself, and many others out of this endless cycle of hopelessness, he would be Truly Humbled Under God. That’s what ‘Thug’ means.”
Check out the dramatic moment below.
Steel’s revelation is just the latest dramatic turn in the YSL RICO trial, which officially got off the ground on Monday (November 27) after months of delays and over a year-and-a-half since Thug was put behind bars.
According to Billboard, the room opened with Fulton County Chief Deputy District Attorney Adriane Love reading a passage from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book about wolf packs, then drawing the comparison to YSL, saying that Thug’s gang had similarly “operated as a pack.”
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“For 10 years and counting, the group calling itself ‘Young Slime Life’ dominated the Cleveland Avenue community,” Love claimed. “They created a crater … that sucked in the youth and innocence and even the lives of some its youngest members.”
The hearing started over an hour late, however, because a juror was missing. In addition, Love did not finish her opening statement, as minutes into it, there were so many objections that Judge Ural Glanville was forced to clear the jury from the courtroom.
Young Thug’s legal team claimed that she was “burden shifting” in her explanation of the case to jurors – wrongly making it appear that the defendants would need to prove that they were innocent. Eventually, Thugger’s lawyer, Brian Steel, moved for a mistrial after he claimed Love had shown jurors evidence that had already been banned from the case.
The request was denied, though Judge Glanville did reprimand Love and her team for how they opened. A lunch break was then called and there were “extended disputes” between both sides, and jurors returned to continue opening statements through the afternoon.
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The trial is expected to last upwards of a year.
