‘King Slime’: Prosecutors Say Young Thug Was a Violent Gang Boss as RICO Trial Kicks Off

Jewel Wicker and Bill Donahue
·4 min read
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Atlanta prosecutors accused chart-topping rapper Young Thug of running a criminal street gang that operated like a “pack” of wolves during opening statements of the artist’s high-profile racketeering trial on Monday (Nov. 27).

Kicking off a complex trial that is expected to last as long as a year, Fulton County Chief Deputy District Attorney Adriane Love read a passage from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book about wolf packs — and said that Thug’s gang had similarly “operated as a pack.”

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“For ten years and counting, the group calling itself ‘Young Slime Life’ dominated the Cleveland Avenue community,” Love told the jury. “They created a crater … that sucked in the youth and innocence and even the lives of some its youngest members.”

Love repeatedly referred to Thug as “King Slime” and portrayed him as the clear leader of the gang: “The evidence will show that the members of YSL knew who their leader was, and they knew the repercussions of not obeying him.”

The prosecutor accused the rapper of asserting himself as the leader of the gang both in his actions and song lyrics.  She alleged that Thug rapped “hundred rounds in a Tahoe” in the song “Slime Shit” after a rival, Donovan Thomas, was killed by YSL members while standing next to his Chevy Tahoe. In the indictment, prosecutors allege Thug rented the 2014 Siler infiniti Q50 sedan that was used by other YSL members to carry out the crime.

“We didn’t chase any lyrics to solve any murders,” Love said of the current debate about the use of lyrics in this trial and others. Instead, she said prosecutors in this case “chased the murders and found the lyrics” that pointed to true, specific events.

Kevin Liles, CEO of Warner Music’s 300 Entertainment, attended opening arguments and continued to allege that the case is an attack on rap music as a whole. “If this were country music, rock music…we wouldn’t be here,” Liles told reporters outside the courtroom before opening arguments began. Young Thug’s label imprint is owned by 300 and Warner Music Group.

In an indictment unveiled last year, Fulton County prosecutors alleged that Thug (Jeffery Williams) and his “YSL” were not really a record label/music collective called “Young Stoner Life,” but a violent Atlanta gang called “Young Slime Life” that committed murders, carjackings, drug dealing and other crimes over the course of a decade.

Along with other charges, Thug stands accused of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a law based on the more famous federal RICO statute that’s been used to target the mafia, drug cartels and other forms of organized crime. If convicted on all eight of his counts, Thug faces decades in prison.

Go read an explainer of the YSL case here, including a full breakdown of the legal charges and a deep-dive into the background of the accusations.

In Monday’s opening statements, prosecutors suggested that Thug didn’t commit many of YSL’s alleged crimes himself, but that many of the violent acts committed by his co-defendants were in service to the rapper and the overall criminal enterprise. In one such instance, Love says YSL members shot at Lil Wayne’s tour bus while the rapper was in town for a concert “for nothing, except to show their dominance.”

“There will be no evidence that Lil Wayne threatened either of them that night,” she said.

Another time, Love said, YSL members reached out to Young Thug to approve an attempt on rival YFN Lucci’s life. According to her, Lucci was subsequently stabbed while in Fulton County Jail but survived.

The prosecutor also detailed the origins of the Young Slime Life criminal street gang, saying it had been created following a rift in a gang known as “ROC” (Raised on Cleveland”). Love said Thug was a founding member of ROC, whose members were known for committing burglaries and stealing ATM machines, before becoming the “proclaimed leader” of YSL. YSL, she continued, was aligned with the Sex Money Murder sect of the Blood gang.

After months of slow-moving jury selection, Monday morning was set to finally mark the start of the trial for Thug and five remaining alleged members of his gang. But the start of the hearing was delayed for an hour over a missing juror; then, just minutes into Love’s statements, the case was bogged down in objections, forcing Judge Ural Glanville to clear the jury from the courtroom.

Defense attorneys first claimed that Love was “burden shifting” in her explanation of the case to jurors — meaning she was wrongly making it appear that the defendants would need to prove that they were innocent. Thug’s lawyer, Brian Steel, then moved for a mistrial after he claimed that Love had shown jurors evidence that had already been explicitly banned from the case. Glanville later denied that request but admonished the state for how it had prepared its opening statements.

Eventually, after a lunch break and extended disputes among counsel for both sides, jurors returned to the courtroom and opening statements continued throughout the afternoon.

Max Schardt, an attorney for defendant Shannon Stillwell, was the sole defense attorney to give an opening argument on Monday. The remaining defense attorneys, including Steel, are expected to deliver opening statements on Tuesday (Nov. 28).

UPDATE: This story was updated on Nov. 27 at 8:08 p.m. ET with additional details from Monday’s hearing.

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