That Time I met Young Thug

Going out in Montreal you quickly learn that style is not compromised for practicality. Despite its extreme weather conditions, all seasons of the year miniskirts and revealing body suits are donned. Throw a North Face puffer jacket over top, that will likely be stuffed in to a corner amongst a dozen others that look just like it later that night, and you’re ready to go. Risking potential frostbite and hypothermia are just the name of the game in exchange for scoring potential cuties, or at least a post-able pic out of the 356 you had your begrudging friend Brianna take.

“Can we get another one with flash?”

Going out after a week of classes, or your 9 to 5, or let’s be real you may very well find yourself lined up on a Tuesday night just coming off the heels of another full weekend in this city. Tonight is yours and you’ll be damned if you weren’t going to have the best time ever. After trying on everything in yours and your roommates closets to find the right outfit, having applied your makeup to perfection, then sat around on your phones for hours doing nothing until it’s finally a reasonable time to show up without looking uncool, you head out.

You can imagine our frustration, when after all of this, me and my friends got turned away at the door of the club we’d planned our night around. Three cute, young girls dressed in our Tuesday bests, freezing our tuchus’ off, nipples so hard they threatened to poke holes in my semi sheer spaghetti-strapped dress I’d borrowed from my roommate. If this wasn’t good enough to entice our way past bouncers I guess it was official: objectification was dead. Not like the good old days where sexism actually got you somewhere.

The next weekend when my friend Renée decided she wanted to go to this same club for her birthday, I was dubious. It was her night, of course we’d do whatever she liked, and hopefully the occasion would have better luck pulling on some heartstrings than my hardened teats did.

I met her and her friends at an Indian restaurant for dinner, after which there was a brief intermission period where we all went home to change (the aforementioned sitting around in your living room, scrolling through instagram phase), before meeting at the club. Sifting through the gaggle of clone-like preppy girls I simultaneously felt better than them, and threatened that they might make the cut while I would find myself walking home alone again in the cold. Still searching for my cohort, I called Renée several times before she picked up, her voice cutting in and out as she attempted to coordinated with the rest of the group. Dragging myself to the front of the queue I was surprised and delighted that Renée somehow knew the bouncer, who greeted her enthusiastically by name, before pulling back the velvet rope and waving us in.

Once in the club I came down with a serious case of the “Party Blues”, the near fatal condition where everyone around you seems to be having the time of their lives while you’re sandwiched somewhere between anguish and woe. You can’t exactly understand why, the scantily clad girls marching around with comically large sparkler-topped bottles of Grey Goose seemed to be enjoying themselves. You think to yourself how you could do their job, better probably. Now you’re resenting the girls for taking the job that should have been yours, and then you could have been happy while they were resenting you for just trying to pay your way through college. I bet they got this job solely based on their looks, meanwhile you couldn’t even get in to the club without your friend’s connection. Great. You’re just a sad, ugly, unemployed loser, feeling bloated quite frankly from the Indian food you’d all had earlier.

Feeling like a grouch as I watched everyone else dance and make out with randos, I was thinking very seriously of leaving when Renée let us know she had some exclusive intel. Young Thug was supposedly making a surprise appearance that night. That’s right, THE Young Thug, the very same one I knew from features on all of two songs that played in rotation at parties in high school. So I stuck it out, leaned against a wall, arms folded, and waited. Half an hour passed, 45 minutes. Nothing.

Renée circled back with updated news, Young Thug wasn’t coming but this other producer known as “London On Da Track” would be making an appearance. I had absolutely no idea who this person (with a made up sounding name) was, but he was apparently famous so I figured he was worth sticking around for. Another half hour passed and I made the call I should have made ages before: I decided to go home.

I said my goodbyes, then headed for the door. On my way out someone from security stopped me and asked--

“Are you with ________?” I could barely hear what he said over the heavy bass of the surrounding speakers, but my answer was immediate and unflinching.

“Yes.”

Suddenly I was following this man down corridors clearly not meant for guests. Obviously some kind of mistake was being made here but I wasn’t about to stop it, if for no other reason than sheer curiosity. Was the confusion purely based off of the way that I looked? The energy I was projecting? Come to think of it the ventilation had been pretty strong, maybe these nips still had a point to prove. I suppose on first glance annoyance and feelings of abandonment could be mistaken for confidence…? Maybe Monsieur Bouncer had just seen a certain “je ne sais quoi” in me and decided to take a chance on an unknown kid. Take that Grey Goose girls, I could make it in this world too!

Further and further we went, twisting and turning down hallways, still clueless where we were going. For all I knew I was being kidnapped. The stark hallways reminded me of those trod by popstars right before they headed out on stage in every concert documentary I’d ever seen (Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, One Direction, Taylor Swift, yeah I knew my shit). Finally we came to a door my companion knocked on before swinging open. The room was filled with large, intimidating looking men who wordlessly looked me up and down, seeming confused. All eyes were on me, which for the first time in my life made me nervous. I was just coming out of a party blues coma and was filled to the brim with butter chicken, I was in no headspace to seduce my way in to their hearts or this cramped room.

“I was just trying to go home!” I blurted out before anyone else could say anything. The security guard who had brought me back looked at me annoyed, as if I was making us both look bad.

“What are you doing?!” He said, which seemed like a loaded question.

“I’m sorry!” I yelped before scurrying back down the winding maze of VIP passageways and out the exclusive front door where a line of unconnected ugos were still waiting to get in.

With my head high, I once again found myself walking back to my dark apartment in solitude. I was already planning how I would tell this story when it came up.

Renée texted asking if I’d gotten home alright, and informed me that both Young Thug and London On Da Track had made appearances that night, coming on stage right after I had gone. Truth be told I had no idea what Signor Young Thug or London On Da Track Esquire looked like, so who’s to say they were not, in fact, in that room I was escorted to?

I said I was more than alright, and told her I had actually met the stars before I left!

I called her this week, told her I wanted to write about that night, at that club, where I’d met those rappers, and she knew exactly what I was talking about. Over the years this story has been told many a time. Any time I’ve been in the company of someone to mention Young Thug I tell them how we met. The story morphs a little each time, as stories always do.

“Super down to earth, I was like ‘Nice to meet you Mr. Thug--’ and he just cuts me off and goes ‘Please, call me Young’”

“For somebody with 3.2 million followers London was pretty shy actually, didn’t say much.”

“Near the end of the night Young Thug, ‘Young’ as I know him, asked for my number but I told him I just wasn’t looking for anything serious, y’know?”

When I saw that Young Thug had featured on a song on the latest Drake album I was proud to be able to say I knew him from back in the day.

As somebody who was hand picked from a crowd of beautiful girls, somebody who is able to twist the truth in to a captivating tale until she can barely remember what really happened, I learned a valuable life lesson that night. No velvet rope or security was standing in my way, the only obstruction between me and my dreams, me and meeting c-list rappers (same thing), was myself.