Future has been on an underrated tear since last October, when his rage-fueled Monster mixtape was dramatically overshadowed by an ill-advised guest appearance on Mike Will Made-It’s “Pussy Overrated,” with Wiz Khalifa, which, in the context of his failed romance with R&B singer Ciara, seemed even more crass than it was foolish. The tape itself was vintage Future but also magnificently petty, and it went mostly underappreciated as a result. He continued his strong run with the Zaytoven-produced Beast Mode, which was an equally snappy but less petulant response to his emotional turmoil. After announcing plans earlier this month to keep the ball rolling with a sequel to 2011’s Dirty Sprite on Twitter, Future unexpectedly dropped 56 Nights, the latest in what feels like a sustained campaign.
The mixtape’s title refers to the amount of time Future’s DJ, Esco, spent in a Dubai jail on a trip to the 2014 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. It’s officially billed as a DJ Esco tape hosted by Future, the first since 2013’s No Sleep, but unlike that 23-track offering, featuring contributions from Shy Glizzy, Young Scooter, and Peewee Longway, 56 Nights is Future standing alone with no guests. When he raps, “None of this money that matter; all of my niggas, they matter,” on “Diamonds From Africa,” it feels like an acknowledgement of his DJ’s ordeal.
Future still has other problems, too, and like Beast Mode and Monster before it, 56 Nights hints at the lingering effects from his soured relationship. Where many songs on Beast Mode found Future trying to sort out the pain of estrangement in the embrace of other women, 56 Nights drowns in a potent drug concoction that influences both its sound and his addled, prattling lyrics, which often give way to profound moments of clarity. Casual sex is often written off as tedious, only spurred on by copious drug use (“I didn’t wanna fuck the bitch/This molly made me fuck her even though she average,” on “March Madness”; “I pour up again and again/I said I wasn’t gonna fuck with that bitch then I fucked her again,” on “Never Gon Lose”). The overarching theme is reliance on drugs over women, a preference he spells out on “Purple Comin In”: “Fuck a bitch on that shit, I don’t need her” versus “Fell in love with that drank and I need it.” Future seems to have developed a codependency on pharmaceuticals, one that fills a void and levels his unease—on “Trap Niggas” he raps, “I’m drinking Activis, the only thing that relax me”—and this continuous state of inebriation allows Future to be remarkably open.
The bulk of the production on 56 Nights is handled by Southside with one song produced by Tarentino. Both are members of 808 Mafia, the in-house production team of Waka Flocka Flame’s Brick Squad Monopoly, and Future follows their unhinged, woozy lead, lining knocking 808s with frenetic flows that fumble into mumbling like on “No Compadre.” He occasionally offers brief bits of social commentary and self-reflection: On “March Madness,” he sings, “All these cops shooting niggas, tragic,” and, on “Trap Niggas,” “I got a lowercase ‘t’ across my chest/Your crack house doing numbers then you blessed/You move your mama to a crib from the ’jects.” The ideas arrive as garbled fragments that, when pieced together, tell his story, and 56 Nights is an unfiltered look at life through the eyes of a wasted Future.
