After the longest-running criminal trial in the history of Georgia, Young Thug is free. After two and a half years in jail on suspicion of RICO violations, the Atlanta rap star arrived at a plea deal last week. The conditions of his release are extreme. Thug agreed to 15 years of probation, and he’s effectively banned from returning to his hometown except in very specific circumstances. Still, he’s out now, and he’s asking law students to consider careers as defense attorneys.
Earlier this week, Young Thug appeared in an Instagram video with his fellow Atlanta rap star T.I. On Wednesday, Thug also made a remote appearance when his lawyer Brian Steel spoke to students at Emory University School Of Law. During the trial and its aftermath, the bond between Thug and Steel was the stuff of memes. One of the conditions of Thug’s release is community service, which can include speaking to students. Since Emory is in Atlanta, Thug couldn’t talk to that class in person. Instead, Steel held up his phone, and Thug spoke to the class over FaceTime. As HipHopDX reports, Thug told the students to become defense lawyers rather than prosecutors.
Speaking to the class, Thug had this to say:
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. He’s very pedagogical. 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 wanna put people in prison for mistakes? Because everybody makes mistakes. They’re human. And everybody on this phone, everybody 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 become lawyers. 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, and I think that’s God work. 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.
Why were they giggling so much? If the future of the legal profession is a bunch of people who giggle at a heartfelt Young Thug FaceTime speech, then we’re in even more trouble than I thought.
