Pitchfork writer Alphonse Pierre’s rap column covers songs, mixtapes, albums, Instagram freestyles, memes, weird tweets, fashion trends—and anything else that catches his attention.
Nothing sounds like Rich Gang: Tha Tour Pt. 1, a melody-driven spirit bomb that is an ode to partying, getting laid, getting rich, Atlanta, and, most importantly, brotherhood. The only official mixtape by one of rap’s all-time great duos, Young Thug and Rich Homie Quan (with lots of pep talks and hand rubs courtesy of Birdman), Tha Tour is a 20-track odyssey of bluesy duets and luxury-goods flexing by two artists with chemistry so intense that it’s a little bit romantic. When I first heard the tape, in 2014, as a teenager, I didn’t even know rap could sound like “Tell Em (Lies),” where Quan’s ragged croons curl around Thug’s hypercharged shriek of “I’ma pull up eat on that pussy and dip.” Or “Freestyle,” which is some of the hungriest rapping you’ll ever hear, as Thug and Quan trade their dreams and ambitions while stretching their sung flows like taffy. (The historic video, directed by Be El Be, makes their bond look sacred.) “Thugger pulled up, that’s my brother/Same mother, different daddy,” Quan lilts. Not even their near-decade blood feud since Tha Tour will ever get me to believe that they didn’t truly share that feeling in the moment.
Almost 10 years later, Young Thug is caught in legal purgatory fighting a RICO case brought on by the state of Georgia, and, now, Rich Homie Quan is dead at the age of 34. (A cause of death has not yet been made official.) Another gut punch. It feels like a gaping hole has been left in Atlanta, the tragedies just keep coming. Lil Keed. Rico Wade. Trouble. Bankroll Fresh. Marlo. Shawty Lo. Takeoff. All gone since 2016. Even outside of Atlanta, grief has become one of the defining traits of hip-hop culture. When the news of Quan’s death floated across my timelines Thursday afternoon, I thought not again and immediately began passing YouTube links back and forth with friends, all too used to the routine. Texting one person, “We went crazy to ‘Lifestyle’ in 2014,” lifelessly responding “GOAT duo” to Pitchfork head honcho Mano, who sent me a URL to Thug and Quan’s Slime Season 2 link-up “Never Made Love.” Another friend summed it up sharply in a group chat: “So much music that meant the world to me that I won’t be able to hear without thinking about death.”
Up in New York, we played “Type of Way,” Quan’s 2013 mainstream breakout, almost as much as “Hot Nigga.” Off his mixtape Still Goin In – Reloaded (the third project in the Goin In series in between unforgettable titles like I Go In On Every Song, I Promise I Will Never Stop Going In, and If You Ever Think I Will Stop Goin’ In Ask RR (Royal Rich)), “Type of Way” is a showcase for Quan’s hearty yet gentle harmonies that had a way of making me feel like I was popping bottles every night and not living off Subway six-inch sandwiches. It’s one of the signature smash hits of the New Atlanta wave—which includes Thug, Migos, Future, Peewee Longway, a reborn 2 Chainz, and so many more—with a catchy hook vague enough to mean nothing and everything at the same time.
Of the duo, Thug has always been considered the stylistic pioneer, but Quan, while not as eccentric, always felt like a bridge between melodic Southern rap of the past and present. Sometimes he sang-rapped like had a wad of gum in his mouth, clearly a student of all the early Future tapes. (Quan’s intergalactic trap standout “Differences” could have been on Astronaut Status.) He cooed about his struggles in a way that never felt too heavy-handed (“Forever Millions” is a personal favorite), so much so that I think of him as the connective tissue between the gritty anthems of Boosie and the gloomy punchline ballads of NoCap and Rylo Rodriguez. When his wails were fully unleashed, they were full of little cracks and imperfections that made me think of Auto-Tune Wayne, Skooly of the Rich Kidz, R&B-ish Young Dro, and Kilo Ali’s “Love in Ya Mouth.” And I’d be trippin’ if I didn’t mention that he was a hook and ad-lib heavyweight champ; trying to mimic his exact speak-sing on “My Nigga” or drawn-out melodies on “Flex (Ooh, Ooh, Ooh)” was half the fun.
Quan was born Dequantes Devontay Lamar and raised in East Atlanta. He was a fan of James Patterson’s Alex Cross books, and grew up as a star center fielder, which I always found cool, because you don’t hear too much about Black baseball studs anymore. He told Rawiya Kameir in 2015, “I played from 14 to 18—like, I was very good at it. I was Mr. Baseball my freshman year. We were good and we had great talent. I don’t wanna say it’s a white sport now, but it is. I feel like a lot of us [Black players] get overlooked but it’s the way it goes, though.” Quan has said he turned down an opportunity to play in college, and he ended up hanging around Atlanta where he got sent to jail on burglary charges, which is where he started writing poetry that later morphed into music. Seamlessly blending rapping and singing, he would go on to be one of the faces of one of Atlanta’s greatest eras, the warped and wild and gaudy early 2010s—an era that lives in my mind as the image of Quan’s arm wrapped around Thug, medallions on his chains the size of a hockey puck, in the video for “Lifestyle.”
Not too long after Tha Tour Pt. 1, Quan and Thug drifted apart for reasons that were never made entirely clear. A joint tour for the mixtape never materialized. Soon enough, Quan retreated to the background. The reasons to blame were a molly addiction, Atlanta street politics, and label issues, made worse by a leaked song, from the Rich Gang sessions, where Quan alluded to what sounds like rape: “I don’t want your ho, just want that cookie from her/She tried to resist so I took it from her/How are you gonna tell me no?/You must not know who I am.” He later apologized for the lines, but they always stuck with him.
He had a few hit-or-miss comeback projects, namely the emotionally resonant Rich as In Spirit, which has its moments. And, even though he was out of the spotlight, I never thought of Quan as a World Star–era artifact. It always felt like any day that the new Rich Homie Quan song would appear on my Instagram feed and he would be blasting out of every speaker again like nothing had ever happened. That was the way things were supposed to go. Preferably side by side with Thug. They would finally go on that tour, arms locked, matching designer outfits, Birdman in the shadows with dollar signs for eyes. It probably never would have happened, but that didn’t stop me from dreaming about that Hollywood ending. Rarely does rap get to experience those.
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