It’s a gigolo’s lament, but it’s moving – and fresh evidence of Drake and Future’s ability to generate creative sparks together. In an evocative moment, he notes that when he and his woman talk over the phone, he can hear her tears. “You pray for my demons, girl, I got you/Every time I sip on codeine, I get vulnerable,” he admits. On “Wait for U,” he tackles FZ and ATL Jacob’s guitar-flecked beat with charismatic passion. (One Thugger line involves butts and diamonds.) A plethora of producers – “712PM” has five listed beatmakers alone – render a pleasingly anonymous symphony of rolling trap percussion and moody keyboard tones.Įventually, Future’s hard man pose softens. The insouciant behavior continues with “I’m Dat N*gg*,” where he brags, “I’m just a ‘Ghetto Boy’ like Peezy.” “Keep It Burnin” features Kanye West, who claims with typical pomp that he’s “Comin’ from the ‘Raq/The home of the drillers.” Then there’s the self-explanatory and lyrically profane “For a Nut” with Gunna and Young Thug. “Stepped out the mud, this bitch can’t wait to tie my shoelace/Also like girls, bet this money make the bitch so gay,” he raps, illustrating a portrait of comely “try-sexual” women. He snaps hard with verve, offering deft lines that convey his world of Benzes, Cartier watches and threesomes amidst nods to his criminal past. The opening track on I Never Liked You, “712PM,” brings his contradictions to bear. Most importantly, it’s an album with layers that’s more engaging than recent fare such as 2019’s appealing yet boilerplate Future Hndrxx Presents: The Wizrd and Save Me EP and 2020’s one-two punch of desultory hive-bait, High Off Life and Pluto x Baby Pluto, the latter with Lil Uzi Vert. I Never Liked You is no DS2, but it has a compositional sweep often absent from his work. He’s capable of drawing on deep wells of emotion, reasserting his primacy as a key (if not the key) figure in post-Weezy/T-Pain/Kid Cudi melodic rap. Yet he also reveals how his relationships with the opposite sex affect him personally. On I Never Liked You, he unashamedly indulges in his characteristic blend of misogynist impulses, reducing women to chattel to be consumed and dispensed with. But his changes tend to be subtle and made on his terms. Only old heads that doggedly call him a “mumble rapper” can’t see that. To his credit, Future foregrounds a sample of Nigerian singer Tems’ “Higher” on a key collaboration with Drake, “Wait for U.”ħ0 Greatest Music Documentaries of All Timeįuture has proven himself capable of evolution. The campaign looked like a self-own for a rap industry resistant to promoting anyone other than hetero men, whether it’s the homophobic backlash against gay performers like Lil Nas X, the clownish undermining of talented women like Megan Thee Stallion, or even the frequent absence of female vocalists on highly anticipated rap albums and industry-generated “GOAT” lists.
They just don’t want to admit it.” That latter quote – a response to controversy over his troubling behavior towards his ex-lovers – enthralled the Future Hive, which gleefully anticipated the cascade of “toxic masculinity” that his new album, I Never Liked You, would bring. “People have their own definition of what toxic is,” Future told veteran journalist Elliott Wilson in a widely circulated GQ cover story that boldly proclaimed the 38-year-old Atlanta artist as “The Best Rapper Alive.” “ all were toxic to me.