When country collides with hip-hop, sparks usually fly, but this time the explosion came from a leaked jailhouse tape.
New audio has surfaced of Atlanta rapper Young Thug, locked up on RICO charges, seemingly scheming about how to outpace Morgan Wallen’s monster album One Thing At A Time. The tape reportedly dates back to June 2023, right as Thug’s comeback project Business Is Business was gearing up to drop. At the same time, Wallen’s record was still bulldozing the Billboard 200 and stacking up week after week at No. 1 like a freight train that refused to slow down.
In the clip, Thug’s team can be heard warning him that Morgan Wallen was the real obstacle. One member told him, “He’s doing 100,000 every week, no matter what.” At first, Thug seemed clueless and asked, “Who?” When told it was “the country guy,” Thug lost it. “Why the hell didn’t we think to put him on the album? Like, what the hell?”
That is when things got shady. Thug asked, “You think we gon’ beat the boy?” and his team assured him they would not sleep until they did. Then Thug added a line that had fans convinced he was talking about using bots. “You still got that plug, right? That stuff we did with them, that plug, yeah?”
If that sounds familiar, it is because other leaked calls suggest Thug spent $50,000 buying streams to boost Gunna’s DS4Ever over The Weeknd’s Dawn FM in 2022. This makes the idea that he might have tried to juice the numbers again less surprising. Whether or not it actually happened, one thing is clear. Even from jail, Young Thug was watching Morgan Wallen dominate and could not stand being second best.
The irony is that Wallen was not even trying to compete with hip-hop releases. He was simply doing what he does best, which is selling out stadiums, streaming at levels Nashville has never seen, and dropping 36-track albums that fans still devour months after release. One Thing At A Time ended up spending 19 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Even now, his follow-up I’m the Problem is still sitting comfortably on top of the charts.
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Thug’s frustration only proves how massive Wallen’s impact really is. A country boy from Sneedville, Tennessee, became the biggest name in all of music and was big enough to rattle one of rap’s titans. That says everything about where country music stands in 2025. It is no longer a niche. It is the heavyweight champ, holding off pop, hip-hop, and everything in between.
Some fans also had fun with the leaked audio, latching on to Thug’s line about maybe teaming up with Wallen. “Beat the boy, then tell the boy, ‘Can’t beat me, join me,'” he said, almost like he was pitching a collaboration from inside his cell. And the truth is, that idea is not so far-fetched. Wallen has already linked with rappers like Lil Durk and Moneybagg Yo, and he even nodded to Young Thug and Rich Homie Quan’s “Lifestyle” in his track “180 (Lifestyle).”
Maybe Thug wanted to buy streams, or maybe he just wanted to talk tough, but none of it mattered in the end. Business Is Business debuted at No. 2, and Wallen’s reign kept right on rolling.
At the end of the day, Morgan Wallen is not just beating the competition. He is reshaping it. And if leaked audio proves anything, it is that even behind bars, Young Thug knew the boy from Tennessee was the one to beat.
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