Hey, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, Internet's busiest music nerd. I hope you're doing well.

It's time to do a pretty interesting follow-up here, esentially giving you guys a bit of an update on one of the most consequential legal to-dos to come out of the rap world in the last few years, and that would be the Young Thug/YSL RICO case. Something most likely you guys are familiar with at this point.

We have covered it a few times on this channel, not only because Young Thug is obviously one of the biggest artists in the industry today, but in addition to that, this case was potentially pretty consequential due to the way in which, at a few points, rap, lyrics, and certain Young Thug songs were essentially entered into the case as evidence of his illegal activity.

It's also important to note that the prosecution spent a good deal of this case trying to paint YSL as not just a label, music collective, what have you, but also a formal criminal syndicate. And a significant part of that effort, at least in the eyes of the public watching this case anyway, came down to Gunna, an artist who I've covered numerous times on my channel. Not positively, I will say, as I'm not really a massive fan of the guy's music.

But a significant part of the discourse regarding the YSL RICO case came down to Gunna taking what's known as an Alfred plea, where he essentially took a deal where he got to maintain his innocence while simultaneously telling the court pretty much what it wanted to hear about the state of YSL, essentially framing it as a criminal enterprise while simultaneously also on top of that, putting out a public statement talking about his reasons for joining YSL and how for him it was really about the music and his career and so on and so forth.

Now, Gunna apparently is still connected to the YSL and 300 Entertainment labels to this day. In fact, his latest record, the last one dropped through the label. But it still remains that taking this plea did not result in a lot of positive press for Gunna in the immediate, meaning he was instantly painted as a rat, as a snitch. And look, I'm not going to come on here and pretend like I'm the number one expert or authority or the most important voice when it comes to street politics, the Atlanta hip hop scene, the ethics of snitching, staying silent, or any of that.

I mean, look at me. Do I look like your go to source for that information? No, obviously I'm not. But it still remains that Gunna is one of the most popular rappers out of Atlanta on the scene today. He has quite a bit of crossover appeal in the music industry, actually. And that's despite the fact that since taking that Alfred plea, there have been a lot of hip hop artists and fans who have come out against him, and it's led to at least a little bit of alienation in the industry, which he most definitely needed to overcome in order to build his career back to where it is today.

Because, again, despite me not really being a big fan of his latest record myself, I can't really deny that commercially, it did do pretty well. These accusations and this general portrayal of Gunna as a snitch, as a that have long broken containment from the hip hop world. These are jokes and allegations and framing that he has needed to dodge and work around for years at this point.

So now, with all of that being said, what is especially interesting today is that recently, information has come to light that Gunna might not have been the only person who fed the authorities some information, told them what they wanted to hear. We now have Young Thug responding to allegations of snitching himself, outright posting and denying a statement that is on the first page of a legal document saying that he gave some testimony or information while in a police car.

In the wake of all of this, there is an almost two-hour piece of deposition audio that fans have just been absolutely going over with a fine-tooth comb. And now, also on top of that, he has been in a back and forth with fellow Atlanta rapper Ralo, essentially pointing at each other and arguing over who told the most.

Now, at this time, the dust obviously is not fully settled on this topic. The full details are sure to pan out over the next few weeks or so. But the reason I'm really making this video here is that personally, I find it to be patently unfair that Gunna was essentially put into a situation where he had to really soak up the brunt of the view, the accusations, the perception that he's just a rat, a snitch.

Frankly, I think it's pretty commendable that since taking that plea, which, to put it clearly, again, I'm not exactly in the position to make the moral call on what he should or shouldn't have done there and getting back into his music career, Gunna seemingly has turned a lot of his life around and just seems to be focusing a lot on making new music, doing features here and there, and doing a lot of working out, which again, totally cool. Despite the fact that I'm not crazy about the man's music, I still would like to see him personally to do well.

Okay, cutting in here to add some additional thoughts to this very messy ongoing story because, yes, this whole thing is still unfolding and is becoming a worse and worse look by the day. But again, keep in mind, up until this point, the Internet, broadly speaking, is looking at Young Thug pretty skeptically now, and you have terms getting thrown around like "rat-lanta."

With the conversation around all of this being so hot, of course, out of the blue, in comes some leaked audio that is, of course, now creating quite the diversion. But the biggest and most relevant piece of audio that a lot of people are discussing now is this claim that Young Thug makes over a phone call that he paid tens of thousands of dollars in order to give Gunna enough streams behind his new album at the time to compete with Morgan Wallen and also the new Weeknd album, Dawn FM, when that record was dropping.

"The number one album you just had right now, I paid for you to have a number one album. You didn't, you know what I'm saying, honestly earn a number one album over the weekend, my boy. I paid for that shit. You never earned a number one album. I spent 50 extra grand buying a motherfucking streams, 50,000 dollars buying streams for you." - Leaked Audio (allegedly Young Thug)

Which, yeah, that Gunna record did do very well commercially. Even one of his biggest hits actually came off of that record. I mean, it did seem like at the time there was at least some true organic interest around what Gunna was making and put out on that record. But still, this phone call now calls into question the legitimacy of that album's commercial success because we're literally talking about buying streams here.

And maybe we will revisit this topic on this channel, because now this audio has opened up a larger conversation, of course, about who has bots, who doesn't, whose streams and chart positions are actually legitimate and whose aren't.

But again, just let it be known. I don't think it's at all an accident that this audio has now come out at this time, and the conversation now less around who's talking about who, who's admitting to what. And now instead, we're talking about Gunna, is he even a legitimate artist because his streams are potentially bought.

So yeah, a lot of madness around this topic right now. Complete insanity, actually. Let me know what you guys think about all of this down in the comments. I'm sure you will.

Anthony Fantano, this whole freaking situation, forever.