Future is certainly a prolific artist, though it is getting a bit excessive. Since 2011, he has released at least two projects every year, often three or more. His work ethic, long a point of personal pride, paid big dividends across an excellent mixtape trilogy (Monster, Beast Mode, and 56 Nights) in the run up to his commercial peak with Dirty Sprite 2 and his cash-in collaboration with Drake, What a Time to Be Alive. Since then, his music is either chasing those highs or stuck in cruise control. His Purple Reign tape introduced some moving new deep cuts to his catalog but was modest by his standards and he rushed out EVOL a month later for an Apple exclusive. His new self-titled album is the first in a pair of projects released in a seven-day span. Perhaps for Future, prolificity is about excess, not just because it’s a flex, but because it always requires giving more of oneself—almost too much. Both nonstop motion and overindulgence are in his DNA. FUTURE, in many ways, unmasks Future: he’s a creature of habit.
The Atlanta rapper has funneled most of his music through three personas: Super Future, Fire Marshal Future, and Future Hendrix (he explained them as the hitmaker, the party packer, and the rockstar, respectively). The alter egos have characterized much of his output, giving names to his various aesthetics. FUTURE is meant as a Future exhibition, a portrayal of his many sides—superstar, romantic, heartbreaker, hedonist—which have previously only been showcased in flashes. But it doesn’t do anything past Future projects haven’t done already, and ironically it doesn't tell us anything new about Future.
Even under these circumstances, FUTURE is true to form for Future in both content (the first lines rapped are “Got the money coming in, it ain’t no issues/I just a fucked a rapper bitch, I should diss you”), and the sounds he chooses to channel. A song like “Poppin Tags” is “Commas”-esque and “Super Trapper” is forged in the image of 56 Nights’ “Trap Niggas”; both are indicative of Super Future, lining pounding 808 bass with clustered raps. “Flip” is reminiscent of 2013 one-offs like “Finessin’” with warping synths and cracked vocals. The ballad “When I Was Broke” harkens back to the romanticism of Honest or “Turn On the Lights.”
There are bits and pieces of nearly every part of his past here, but replicating his brightest moments is a hit or miss proposition. In bringing all these previous personas together, he creates an album that’s mostly retreads. And there are a few moments that completely lack Future’s patented dynamism and evocation, particularly “Good Dope” and “Scrape.” But even on autopilot, Future can churn out some truly high octane flows (“POA”), sweetly-sung gun ballads (“Draco”), and some pleasant surprises (like the hum-heavy throbber “I’m So Groovy”).
The highlights come when Future journeys into uncharted waters or deep into his own memory bank. “I lost so many niggas to the streets this year,” he opens on the affecting cut “Feds Did a Sweep.” “I ain’t even talkin’ ‘bout,” he pauses to clarify. “They ain’t even dead.” The song recounts days trafficking drugs to survive, police raids orchestrated to suppress said trafficking, and state-sanctioned oppression against black ghettos, all while using intensely lucid writing (“Started cooking work and skipping Chemistry”). Like “Feds,” the ominous “Mask Off” tells a similar tale of crime as a means to survive poverty, but it relinquishes the former’s mournful tone, opting instead to be brazen—doing a robbery without a mask is reckless and implies either carelessness or apathy. He takes drastic measures: “My guillotine, drank promethazine/Tec and beams, go to those extremes.” The two songs have some symmetry—in one, Future is the raider; in the other, the raided. These encounters provide a counterbalance to all the braggadocio and a sharper, behind-the-scenes look at the world that shaped him.
Sonically, FUTURE plays with a pretty interesting array of textures, from the Arcade Fire-sampling minimalist piano chord on “Might As Well” to the whiny, xylophonic chimes on “Zoom” to the wobbly frets screeching on “Outta Time.” Some songs mimic the unpredictable strobe of a laser light show; others induce oriental flute music. Some are fixed, oscillating to and from a single point (like “POA” and “Flip”). Others are slightly off-balance (“Massage in My Room”). But its drum kit patterns are beginning to sound old hat, perhaps a result of overtaxing the same core group of producers (Metro Boomin, Southside, Zaytoven, and Tarentino) the last few years. The songs almost all have the same exact pulse, but they usually manage to intrigue with subtle tonal shifts.
Seventeen tracks is clearly a profusion, but it's a fitting display given Future’s commitment to mass production. The glut of songs create a sampler that allows listeners to pick and choose a handful of favorites, and the cult classics will likely be the ones that make it into his sets. Future has a formula now. That means that we can expect less spontaneity and more sustainability. FUTURE is a fine mix of the stylings of past Futures layered in a rich blend of sounds from a now refined sonic palette. It doesn’t communicate the same intense and complicated emotional concoction that fills his songs when he’s at his most vulnerable and compelling. But it doesn’t have to. It is prototypical of Future, who continues to overshare, often for better but sometimes for worse. He will continue to do the things that allowed him to reach this point: amp up the output, stay active, and feed a ravenous, culture-obsessed public. That is, until he’s ready to surprise us again.
