On November 18, 2011, at the Madlib Medicine Show live event at Mighty in San Francisco, California, the producer brought out Freddie Gibbs and announced their debut collaborative EP titled Thuggin'.

[6] Speaking with Jay-Z's Life + Times, Freddie Gibbs decoded a few lines from "Thuggin'", explaining how he extracted from personal experiences in Gary, Indiana for the track: "The song is 'Thuggin'.

That's a true example of a king to a fiend, someone who was a prominent and hard-working guy in the community that went from not having work and being addicted to crack cocaine.

JC Poppe of DJBooth wrote of the title track, "Gibbs continues to deliver charismatic personality filled verses that include jewels like 'why the Feds worried 'bout me clockin on this corner / when there's politicians out here getting popped in Arizona.'

To those that lost their mind over Watch The Throne's 'Otis', 'Thuggin' is truly the simple sample chop based song to get excited over.

"[8] Ryan J. of The Smoking Section wrote, "The Thuggin' EP and its Gibbs-assisted tracks, 'Thuggin' and 'Deep', provide further evidence that Gibbs isn't just special, but he's also doing something right.