He’s toured with Mystikal, he cites 2Pac as an influence, and he covers LL Cool J on this debut CD, but Ninth Ward born-and-raised Lil’ Thug has a delivery that’s more rapid-fire than all of them. No party chants here, no sliding around the beat, no conversational delivery: Lil’ Thug is on top the beat and riding it like the cops are after him. You might think they are, after what he has to say in these 16 tracks, but you won’t think he’s exaggerating at all, not when he spits out lines like “I graduated amongst them other thugs who gradually waited / Thug played the game amongst niggas who gradually hated” in the time it takes Jay-Z to proclaim how not guilty he is just once.

But Thug’s not about speed, he’s about being raw, and the production bears him out: he usually forgoes the Cristal-drenched strings-and-piano backdrops of the big names and kicks it with the bare minimum, just a beat and the slightest keyboard decoration. On the astonishing “Quotin’ Pac,” Thug goes completely a capella, mixmastering 2Pac’s most famous phrases and song titles into a dizzying two minute tribute that simultaneously doubles up Pac’s delivery time and smokes all the local competition. Even when Thug does bring those strings in, it’s a curveball, used to unload blistering attacks like “Daddy,” where Thug lays out more of his family’s dirty laundry than Eminem would ever dare as a joke. Likewise, “U Need A Thug” keeps just enough of LL Cool J’s original “I Need Love” to make this a cover; the rest is updated with paranoia, violence, and instant erections.You can talk all day long about who’s real, but there definitely won’t be a more deadly SERIOUS—or just deadly—rap CD released this year.