When it comes time to actually sit down and interview Young Thug, it's extremely unnerving. Even for people who are friends with him, Thug can be difficult to talk to. Over the course of observing him for 20-something hours over several days, I did not witness a single act of what might be described as “conversation.” He'd be sitting next to his little sister Dora at a console in the recording studio or playing a high-stakes dice game with various professional gamblers and the rapper Offset, from the group Migos, and he'd be doing what preschool teachers would refer to as “parallel play.”

Young Thug is a figure of unique fascination, the rapper who seems to embody the most mysterious and alluring aspects of the Atlanta music scene, which is itself the object of unique fascination. And, being a highly sought-after rapper whose music has been played on YouTube alone 250 million times, he often finds himself in crowds. But Thug is alone even in a room full of people. He is unapproachable. He radiates volatility. I can't even imagine him making actual, on-purpose eye contact with another human. Looking into a person's eyes—seeking some kind of a connection—is an admission of neediness, and Young Thug would rather be shot dead in the street than need a thing from another human being.

Plus, there's the fact that even when he's talking, no one knows what he's saying. I mean, literally: He's famous for being unintelligible. It's a Thugger meme, a joke. He's the most successful lyricist in the history of the world whose thing is that you can't understand what the fuck he's talking about. It points to the central mystery of Young Thug: How could the world be in love with a guy who isn't asking you to like him, who, if anything, is more giving you the finger, whom you can't understand, and who demonstrably doesn't care whether or not you can understand him? And yet? And yet.

Talking to him has been especially difficult for journalists. He has been known to sit with an interviewer and not answer questions. Not even betray that he knows there is another person in a room with him. GQ once scheduled a photo shoot with him, and he could not be persuaded to get off his kitchen counter to have his picture taken (though clearly, as you can see, he enjoys having his picture taken). He didn't say no; he just never acknowledged that anyone had asked him anything. Once, in the middle of another interview, he got up, walked out of the room, went to the airport, and flew away.

Throughout the two days I was with him, people kept asking me: Have you had your interview yet? And when I said no, they raised their eyebrows and smiled knowingly and said, “Yeah, good luck with that.”

Time was set aside for us to talk. At the appointed hour, someone from his team set two folding chairs in a room, facing each other. The room was troublingly quiet—Thug seems to hate quiet. In time, he came in and sat down. He held his chin high in the air, a regal pose. He wore sunglasses so aggressively mirrored you couldn't detect any sense of a human eyeball.

The first question was what you could call soft. Because what does hardball even mean to a guy like Thug, who speaks openly about sex, about the drugs he does, about the beefs he has? Also because of my being afraid he'd walk out of the room.