What a time to be alive. Oh yes it is my friends. Boom-bap listener’s heads are exploding at the sheer thought that a non-lyrical rapper is one of the most popular artists in hip-hop right now. You can hate his music all you want but the run that Future is on right now is incredible. Just when people thought he was washed up after Honest and dating Ciara, the Atlanta rapper was just warming up.
Not long after his son was born and calling off his engagement with Ciara, the ATLien dropped the first project to get the ball rolling on his current run. Monster was a journey back to the trap; codeine laced lyrics mixed with emotion and songs that would even make the most boring person do a toe tap. Standouts from this include the breakup song “Throw Away”, “Commas”, “Gangland”, “Fetti”, and the trance-ish ballad “Codeine Crazy”. This was just the beginning as he began working on a run that’s similar to Lil’ Wayne from 2006-2008 and 2 Chainz from 2011-2013. It was Nayvadius’ turn to shine and he put in the work from the ground up.
Just on the heels of Monster we got the Zaytoven laced Beast Mode. When this dropped, we had no idea what the motive was behind it or the terrifying story of DJ Esco being locked up overseas (more on that later). We just thought it was Future being generous to us and dropping more quality music to say sorry for Honest. While some consider Beast Mode to be the weakest of the projects we’ve received from Future during his streak, it still has heaters on it. Just take a listen to “Layup”, “Peacot”, or “Real Sisters” if you don’t believe me.
BM dropped in January and by the time March rolled around we had another new Future project. At this point I shouted, “I don’t know why he keep blessing me!” as I hit play on 56 Nights in my hotel room. This one is easily my favorite project from Future during this stretch: no features and all TM88/SouthSide production. Sonically it sounds the best out of the five projects we’ve received while also giving us the spiritual hymn known as “March Madness”. I witnessed what this song does to the general public at a Big K.R.I.T. show recently and it’s infectious. The story behind this tape was Esco had spent 56 nights locked up in Abu Dabi while touring overseas with Future. He was found with marijuana in his bag and they took him away. It’s a scary story, as he was one of few people who knew English, and probably one of the most motivational things to happen in Future’s career. This is also how we received BM as Esco had the hard drive of Future’s music and was locked up. It’s a story he speaks on at the end of “Kno The Meaning” on Dirty Sprite 2.
Speaking of DS2, with all of the hype building for Future to lace us with more codeine and drug tales, “Blow A Bag” dropped mid-July. Then the news hit that we would get a sequel to Dirty Sprite and it was enough to make me hype at 1am on a Thursday night. DS2 is probably my most played project of the year and was my second favorite of the projects that Future had been churning out since Monster. That is, until What A Time To Be Alive dropped in September. Rumors circulated that the Owl God (Drake) and Future Hendrix would be teaming up for a project and, within a week, it was released on Drake’s Beats 1 Radio Show on iTunes. It was one of the few projects I spent money on this year and a solid investment. The thing that helped make WATTBA a success was taking tracks that you knew you could hear Future on and sprinkling Drake on them instead of having Future over 40 and Boi-1da production. It should also be noted that Metro Boomin’ showed his ass on this project and that if Metro doesn’t trust you, it will be followed by Future shooting you.
This run that Future is on is amazing. Love him or hate him, you can’t say that he isn’t working hard. Don’t forget, we’re also supposed to get a Beast Mode 2 from him AND Ape Sh!t with Mike Will Made It in the coming weeks. It feels like there’s an artist that rises every couple of years and has an excellent run before falling off. If that’s the case, we still have another great year of music to expect from Future before fizzling out. He obviously knows this with how much fire he keeps dropping. Leave your favorite song from Future from these five projects in the comments so we can discuss the run he’s on even further.
