Just short of two months after Young Thug‘s team sent live snakes to a host of media outlets to promote his collaborative album Slime Language, we’re sad to report that one of the beautiful little critters has slithered off this mortal coil. Rest in peace, Hubby.
A bit of background. On August 1, music media companies in multiple cities received surprise deliveries of tiny, live green snakes from Young Thug’s promotional team. Billboard, which shares an office and parent company with Spin, got a charming little lady named Digits. As far as we know, she’s doing OK. Upon delivery, the industry peers we talked to were fairly enthusiastic about their new pets, if a little uneasy about the use of a living animals as a PR gimmick, and about their new responsibility to keep those animals alive. When we checked in a month later, the snakes—and their caretakers—were doing well: people were learning to raise crickets for food, and a few especially caring journalists had taken the reptiles in as personal pets.
Hubby died earlier this week. She was originally sent to Noisey, the music wing of Vice, but was later adopted by Girlie Action Media, a PR company. As of early September, she was thriving, wrapping herself around terrarium trees with abandon. Her passing was “strangely sudden,” Girlie Action senior publicist Debbie Pressman wrote to Spin:
It breaks my fucking heart to report that our Young Thug snake has passed. It was strangely sudden- yesterday morning she was barely moving after being pretty active for the last few weeks. I called an exotic pets vet in Columbus Circle to bring her in. When I went to put her in a carrying case, she was stiff. We are all so sad about it. She was such a joy to watch during these dark days…We did everything we could for that little one (did you know you could get gourmet crickets off the internet?)
Our hearts go out to Hubby and her adopted family. We’ve reached out to Thug’s label for comment on Hubby’s death, and will update this post if we hear back.
