What does Thug think he has to do to take his career to the Michael Jackson-level echelon he dreams of? “Wake up and breathe,” he scoffs. “There’s nothing I’ve got to change. I just got to keep succeeding and keep working, just doing my best.” In September, he’ll launch a co-headlining tour with Machine Gun Kelly, the Cleveland it-boy/rapper. Reaction from Thug’s fanbase has been mixed.

I suspect the music industry is too small for Thug. He is the latest in a long tradition of black geniuses who are wholly incompatible with its petty bureaucracies. Thug wants to be the biggest artist and CEO on Earth. Is that possible for the underdog that he is, for the subversive that he was born being, to do on his own terms? To be a Young Thug fan is to hope against hope for pure talent to win the day, and that the ever-present sunset on the skyline represents the end of the day for the fake artists sprouting up like so many bot-bought reblogs.

The longevity of Thug’s skills shields him from being crushed by the machine. His status as a pioneer is undisputed. “Thugger made it OK for everybody to think different,” Post Malone writes in an email, crediting Thug for broadening rap’s horizons. “He is hip-hop, but not afraid to do country, pop, Latin. He makes it okay to be fearless as fuck and just be yourself. He showed you don’t have to listen to anything anyone says. He’s gonna be here for a long time, doing what he does.”

Back at the hotel after his performance, Thug is presented with a gift. It’s an eight-foot landscape oil painting depicting members of the YSL Records family and close associates as soldiers, wearing Napoleon-era French uniforms. All the characters look to Thug, who rides a rearing horse in front of the Sphinx — on the left, a heavenly Nipsey Hussle stands with the battalion. Thug is genuinely moved, studying the canvas and brushing it a few times with his hand. He daps every person involved in the painting, and gets their Instagram handles so he can tag them when he shares it.

“The people that don’t get a lot of likes,” Thug says, “the people that they music don’t buzz a lot, nine times out of 10 they, like, too ahead.” He pauses. Dim light bounces off his face tattoos. “So you can listen to an artist and be like, ‘Man you sound wack. Shit sound like old rap.’ It’s just ahead of the time, it just ain’t came back around yet. It’s all just all the turn around. So you can never really be behind the line, you always can be in front of the line.”