Young Thug Leak: Jail Calls, $50K Streams, and the Apology Run

Young Thug’s jail call leaks began spreading across social media in late August and early September 2025, when dozens of recordings he made from the Fulton County Jail during his YSL RICO incarceration appeared on rap media accounts and fan pages. On the calls, the Atlanta rapper, whose real name is Jeffery Lamar Williams, criticized Gunna, Drake, Future, J. Cole, André 3000, Kendrick Lamar, and GloRilla, admitted paying $50,000 to inflate streams on a Gunna album, and said things about his then-girlfriend Mariah the Scientist that proved personally costly. Within days he was apologizing on X, on a podcast, and eventually in a seven-minute song.

How The Recordings Surfaced

The calls were made between May 2022 and late 2024, the stretch Williams spent in custody awaiting and then standing trial on Georgia RICO charges tied to Young Slime Life. They surfaced publicly in the summer of 2025 through a Twitter/X account called Kurrco, a page called Gunna Daily, and various fan accounts that circulated what appeared to be dozens of separate conversations.¹²

No reporting has established how the recordings got out. Under Georgia law, jail calls are recorded and kept in the Department of Corrections’ offender files, and inmates have no expectation of privacy on jail phone lines. Fulton County Jail, where Williams was held, explicitly records inmate calls.³⁴ Those recordings are exempt from Georgia’s Open Records Act, so they are not supposed to be reachable through a standard records request.⁵

Williams said in a September 2025 podcast interview that he didn’t know who was behind the leaks. His team had managed to shut down a county website after an earlier call with his girlfriend leaked in January, but the summer wave was far larger. He speculated the material might be coming from people unhappy with his public stance against cooperating with authorities.⁶ GQ noted a “non-zero possibility” that some small percentage of what circulated could be fabricated, though Williams’ willingness to apologize for the contents lent the recordings credibility.¹

Why He Was On A Jail Phone

Williams was indicted in May 2022 along with 27 associates under Georgia’s RICO Act. He was denied bail and remained in custody, mostly at Fulton County Jail, through the fall of 2024.⁷⁸⁹ The calls that leaked were made during the roughly two and a half years before that plea.

What Was On The Calls

Gunna

The longest and most damaging thread involved Gunna, real name Sergio Kitchens, the artist Williams had mentored. Gunna entered an Alford plea in December 2022 and walked free on time served. An Alford plea lets a defendant accept a conviction without admitting guilt, but within hip-hop it was widely read as cooperation.⁷

Across several calls Williams framed the plea as a betrayal, called Gunna a “broke-ass” artist he’d helped out of pity, and cited Lil Durk and Future cutting ties with Gunna as proof the rift was permanent. He also alleged that Gunna’s admission that YSL was a gang had escalated the prosecution’s case.¹¹⁰ Williams’ own attorney, Brian Steele, had told him Gunna likely would have been “the first to walk” regardless, because the evidence against him was thin. Williams also claimed he deliberately scheduled his album Business Is Business to drop one week after Gunna’s A Gift & A Curse to overshadow him.

The $50,000 Stream-Buying Admission

The most concrete claim in the whole batch was Williams saying he paid $50,000 to artificially inflate the first-week streaming numbers on Gunna’s DS4EVER. In January 2022 that album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 150,300 equivalent album units, beating The Weeknd’s Dawn FM by 2,300 units. On the call Williams said, “You didn’t honestly earn a No. 1 album over The Weeknd, my boy. I paid for that sh—.” Billboard noted that Luminate, the data company behind its charts, reviews submissions and removes data “deemed suspicious or unverifiable” before publishing final numbers.¹¹

Drake And Metro Boomin

Williams criticized Drake over how he treated producer Metro Boomin after the June 2022 death of Metro’s mother, Leslie Wayne. According to Williams, Drake sent “some stupid condolences” and then, two to three weeks later, reached out about clearing his vocals for “Trance” on Metro’s HEROES & VILLAINS. Williams called it a case of Drake “using the fact that you Drake as a weapon.”² He also said Drake was pressing him to mediate rather than handle his own problems: “Don’t call me talking about, ‘Fix something’ for you to have a song.”¹²

Future

Williams called Future a “buster” for refusing to appear at a “Free Young Thug” benefit show. According to Williams, Future said he didn’t want to feel like he was “stealing your shine,” which Williams dismissed. He also described a one-sided studio relationship, saying Future would ask him to start songs and then behave differently when other people were around.²

Other Artists

On J. Cole, Williams said Cole had never outsold him and had no reason to be selective about collaborating with younger artists, naming NBA YoungBoy.²
On André 3000, Williams said no one in Atlanta could credit the Outkast legend with launching their career.²
On Kendrick Lamar, Williams argued Kendrick would never pass Drake commercially because he mostly collaborated with Baby Keem rather than widening his reach.¹
On GloRilla, Williams made disparaging remarks about her appearance.¹³
Other calls appeared to catch him speaking with women who weren’t his then-girlfriend Mariah the Scientist.¹³

21 Savage Pushed Back On The Call

One leaked recording captured 21 Savage disagreeing with Williams about Gunna in real time. 21 said Gunna had “valid points and no ill intent,” suggested that people attacking Gunna publicly were doing it for attention, and said he would never “run to the internet” about a private friendship.¹¹⁰

The Apology Run

Williams moved to contain the damage within days. On September 8, 2025, he posted a general apology on X: “To everyone involved in this situation, I’m sorry this is happening, and I hope u guys can forgive me.” He added, “Times like these is when my luvs ones are supposed to look at the good I did towards them, then the ugly.”²

He posted individual apologies too. To Mariah the Scientist: “My baby, I was wrong and I’m sorry for what I put u through. U deserved better from me.” To GloRilla: “I’m sorry to u for my words and I honestly don’t think ur ugly at all.”¹³

Two days earlier, on September 6, he had sat for a long interview on the Perspektives With Bank podcast. He framed the calls as the product of a broken state of mind: “I was just so f*cked up and felt like it was over… I’m sitting in a cell 23 hours a day, at this point I’m just talking.” At the same time he stood by much of the substance, saying he’d had the same conversations privately with Lil Wayne and 21 Savage. On Gunna specifically he was conflicted: “I poured so much into him, I can’t even hate him… I don’t wish no ill will on him.” But he described the fallout as losing a friend “over a piece of paper,” and forgiveness was off the table.¹⁴

On September 11, 2025, Williams released a seven-minute track called “Man I Miss My Dogs” that worked through nearly everyone named in the calls. It opened with an apology to Mariah the Scientist, acknowledged a jailhouse visit from Drake (“Never diss you, came to visit me at Cobb County like my kin do”), expressed hope that Drake and Metro Boomin could reconcile, addressed Future, Lil Baby, 21 Savage, and Gucci Mane, and included a flat denial: “N**ga, please I’m not a rat.”¹⁵ He also shared handwritten poems addressed to several of the artists named in the track.¹⁶

What Happened After

Williams confirmed in September 2025 that he and Mariah the Scientist had split, a breakup widely attributed to the contents of the calls.¹⁷

The music side kept moving. On September 26, 2025, he released his fourth studio album, UY SCUTI, which opened at No. 6 on the Billboard 200 with 52,000 first-week equivalent album units and 54.3 million streams, his ninth top-10 album.¹⁸¹⁷¹⁹

The leaks themselves did not produce any known probation violation action against Williams. A separate probation scare in April 2025, over a social media post naming a Fulton County DA investigator, was resolved when Judge Whitaker ruled the post did not violate his probation, while advising him to “exercise restraint regarding certain topics.”²⁰ He remains on 15 years of probation with a 20-year suspended sentence attached.

1
GQ. Young Thug’s Leaked Jail Calls
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Vibe. Young Thug Shots at Future, Drake in Leaked Calls, Apologizes
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Atlanta News First. You Have the Right to Remain Silent: Young Thug’s Jail Calls Hit Social Media Airwaves
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NACDL. Prison/Jail Call Communication Systems in GA
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Georgia Department of Corrections. Open Records Request
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Billboard. Young Thug Big Bank Interview: Things Learned
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Billboard. Young Thug YSL RICO Trial Timeline
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NPR. Young Thug Guilty Plea in YSL Trial
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Courthouse News. Young Thug Takes Plea Deal in YSL Trial
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HotNewHipHop. Young Thug Leaked Jail Calls Timeline
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Billboard. Young Thug Gunna Stream Purchase Allegations
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VladTV. Young Thug Claims Drake Could Have Done More to Help Him in Alleged Jail Call
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Billboard. Young Thug Apologizes for Leaked Jail Calls
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Stereogum. Young Thug Talks Gunna, Leaked Phone Calls, More in Lengthy Podcast Interview
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Rolling Stone. Young Thug Releases Man I Miss My Dogs Addressing Drake, Mariah the Scientist
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Revolt. Young Thug Man I Miss My Dogs: Drake, Lil Baby, Future
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Revolt. Young Thug Confirms UY Scuti Deluxe and 2026 Tour With Quavo
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Complex. Young Thug UY SCUTI First Week Numbers
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105.1 The Bounce. Young Thug Teases New R&B Album Coming Soon
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Fox 5 Atlanta. Judge Rules Young Thug’s Social Media Post Doesn’t Violate Probation