Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101 is the major label debut and overall third studio album by American rapper Young Jeezy. It was released on July 26, 2005, by his indie record label Corporate Thugz, under the distribution from Def Jam. On the UK’s album release, it features the remixed version of “Go Crazy”, featuring guest appearance from rapper Jay-Z.

The album was supported by four singles: “And Then What” featuring Mannie Fresh, “Soul Survivor” featuring Akon, “Go Crazy” and “My Hood”. The album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 172,000 copies in the first week. The album was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

Critical reception

In 2015, hip hop writer Brooklyn Russell declared the album “trap rap’s apotheosis” while observing its impact: “Working with only a handful of Shawty Redd beats and his naturally raspy voice, Atlanta native Young Jeezy would lay down the blueprint for an entire region of rappers—virtually knocking big players like Lil Jon out of commission.”

In 2012, David Drake called it one of the classic albums of the last decade in Complex:

If the early 2000s marked the emergence of Atlanta as one of, if not the most important, scenes in hip-hop, Thug Motivation 101 was its apotheosis—the moment when all of the energy on the streets and in clubs, the apocalyptic production of Shawty Redd and Drumma Boy, the totalizing rasp of Jeezy’s voice became a region and generation’s defining sound.

By the mid-2000s, the club-friendly Lil Jon bangers had given way to something more dilapidated, harsher. The trap house aesthetic pioneered on Jeezy’s Trap or Die mixtape and this album sent shock waves throughout the South, reorienting everything to orbit around its totalitarian vision.

Uninterested in self-consciousness or moral ambiguities, Thug Motivation 101 was anthemic and unapologetically bombastic. There was no equivocating; either you hated it, or you were swept up in the grimy grandeur. – DD