OUT WEST

The Take

Track five of *JackBoys*, 'OUT WEST' is the Travis Scott / Young Thug pairing that became the compilation's most enduring single. Wheezy produces — the Atlanta-Houston axis Wheezy occupies as one of Young Thug's primary collaborators makes this a Thug-coded record more than a Travis one in tone, with the woozy 808 figure and the half-step keyboard loop both reading as Thug-record fingerprints. The track went RIAA Platinum and remains the *JackBoys* song most likely to surface on streaming a half-decade later. Don Toliver does not appear on this track. The track is included on the compilation he is a core member of, and on the album page in this encyclopedia for completeness, but the lead/feature billing is Travis and Thug. As a structural moment in *JackBoys*, 'OUT WEST' is the compilation's Cactus-Jack-meets-YSL summit, the single that gave the project its longest-tail cultural footprint, and the song most likely to pop on a 2020s playlist algorithm seven years after release. Don's presence on the rest of the compilation ('GANG GANG,' 'HAD ENOUGH,' 'WHAT TO DO?') was the launchpad his solo career needed; 'OUT WEST' is the reason the compilation as a whole still moves units.