The Singles Jukebox

Well, he once was.

[Video][Website]
[6.00]

Megan Harrington: No infectious beat, no vibrant off-kilter hook. Light creeps into the production. A distracted listen might give the impression that “Best Friend” is a sad song, but it’s the opposite — a celebration. That nothing about “Best Friend” recommends it to radio or party playlists seems a distinction worth noting. Young Thug is curating a different event, one only his closest friends are invited to attend. The video is sparsely populated (Thugger plays half the characters himself), suggesting that the era of Young Thug as a popular fixture is over, while the era of Young Thug as a singular artist endures. 
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: Harp plucks and emotional shouts-out to best friends would normally be a recipe for what the ’90s trained me to despise as a “ballad,” but Young Thug doesn’t do anything monotone. A glance at the Genius page reminds me that there isn’t an internet subculture that isn’t boiling over with internecine drama and conspiracy-minded Talmudic pseudo-scholarship, a difficult era for those of us who prefer to skate on the surfaces of things and build our own private meanings. But whether it’s about a hetero-, homo-, or autosocial relationship, friendship doesn’t get nearly enough of the credit in popular narratives that it deserves for keeping us all alive.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Two moments: the “hey-yeah” and the “skrrrrrrrt“. Each of them is a show-stopper. For all I know, this isn’t the first time he’s dropped either; all I know is they’re here. Young Shad and Ricky Racks know it, too: the harp accompaniment is placid, the screams are an afterthought. Thugger’s burrowing into some incredible territory.
[9]

Alfred Soto: The first Thug single to sound rote, “Best Friend” strings lines about necklaces and bleedin’ like a bumblebee over the usual London on da Track sonar blip. If he wants swagonometry, he needs better.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: Young Thug’s use of his own voice, how he distorts it in sickening, sometimes emasculating ways, marks him out as an auteur if not quite a virtuoso of the form, and the giddy way it is stretched and shifted like a dying cry is a devastating trick. I’m not sure how well it fits with the rest of it thematically, but it’s certainly a lot better than the rest of it — his yelp needs more help than it’s getting from the production here.
[4]

Micha Cavaseno: I wish that Young Thug having hits meant I always loved them. But this is a surprisingly sleepy success, made all the more tedious by Thugger’s barely spitting on this (the highlight being the MICHAEL JACKSON, MICHAEL JACKSON section), and this beat is less a slumper than a slump. However, I fear that because of a certain industry hype/rap blogger nexus lazily calling all his eccentricities his most promising quality it will be Thug who gets to generate hits out of Atlanta, despite “Best Friend” sounding subdued and dull compared to the majority of “underground” hits. This is the bizarre contradiction of pedestal placing. Has Young Thug been a more consistently exciting rapper than say, your Rich Homie Quans, Cash Outs, and more? Certainly. But I can’t say “Best Friend” deserves rewarding.
[5]