Less than two months after the release of its predecessor, Slime Season 2 arrived on Halloween 2015—Thugger’s third project of his best year to date. Each part of that trifecta showed a different angle of the hard-to-pin-down rapper as he officially hit his stride: If April’s Barter 6 was composed and cohesive, and September’s Slime Season mixtape flaunted his versatility, the second installment of the series felt like the closest look at Jeffery Williams, the man behind the puzzle wrapped in the enigma of Young Thug. Where the first Slime Season tape felt sonically scattered, its 22-track follow-up seemed arranged with a new sense of purpose, though both were culled from the same archive. The mood across Slime Season 2 is dank, woozy, and understated, with psychedelic soundscapes from Wheezy, Goose, and London on da Track. Lyrics abound with charmingly mystifying one-liners for which Thug had become famous, from goofily quotable punchlines (“I look good as your dad on a Friday” from “Thief in the Night”) to existential koans that lingered in your head for days, like “A wise man told me nothin’” from the shimmering “Raw (Might Just).” Every now and then, Thug let his guard down for a moment and offered a glimpse into his psyche, scattering poetic allusions to his deceased brother on the Rich Homie Quan duet “Never Made Love.” The project rounded out an all-time year for a rapper whose sui generis style would shape the decade of rap to come.