During a recent address led by his attorney, Brian Steel, young Thug shared some motivational remarks with a group of law students.
The Atlanta rapper’s lengthy YSL RICO trial ended abruptly on Thursday, October 31, when he agreed to a plea agreement that included a 15-year probationary sentence in addition to time served.
Talking to schoolchildren is one of the community service requirements of his probation, according to Judge Paige Reese Whitaker.
Steel called Thug in over FaceTime earlier this week when he visited Emory University School of Law. The recently released rapper commended the pupils’ ambitions for their careers.
“You gotta always look at it like they’re there to put us in prison and you guys are here to keep us from prison. Brian Steel is the best person possible,” Thug said. “He should be a professor. You guys should become lawyers. I think it’s very important to help people out of the situations they’re in the best you can. I mean, what side do you want to be on? You want to put people in prison for mistakes? Because everybody makes mistakes, they’re human.
“And everybody on this phone, in this classroom, you always need to know that you’re one mistake away. I feel like we need more people like Brian Steel on this earth and less people like that. So I think it’s very, very, very important to be a lawyer over anything. Lawyers and doctors are the two greatest things that were ever founded. You actually help people. That’s doing the real God work. I think every one of you in the classroom should become lawyers for sure. Anything you need from me, I’m here always. We need y’all.”
In other news, Young Thug recorded with T.I. earlier this week, which sparked rumors that he had broken his probation less than a week earlier because Tip had a criminal past.
However, the conditions of Young Thug’s release do not forbid him from hanging around with criminals, only “members or associates of a street gang,” as legal writer Meghann Cuniff noted on X.
Thug’s probation conditions do, however, refer to avoiding “persons or places of disreputable or harmful character,” which Cuniff speculates is vague enough to be used against him.
“Young Thug’s probation does not prohibit him from being around convicted felons, only ‘members or associates of a criminal street gang’ who aren’t immediate family members,” she wrote.
When a Thug fan page asked for clarification on the condition, “Avoid persons or places of disreputable or harmful character,” Cuniff explained: “Really vague and underscores how the plea might have been a really bad idea, given what he ended up getting. Whitaker made it so the state can easily revoke the ‘for lawful music purposes’ exception.”
