It's been an endless wave with Future, from Beast Mode, 56 Nights, Dirty Sprite 2, the Drake-assisted What A Time to Be Alive, Purple Reign and, now, Evol. Once one album is released, Future works tirelessly to bolster his all-star run and to salvage any redeeming morsel of his once mangled and obscure image post-Honest, which dropped before the ugly breakup with R&B starlet Ciara. Released in 2014, and shadowed by the codeine-sorrowed monologue of his recent catalog, it feels weird to think that Honest rings in like a long, distant memory. And it's not that Honest was bad, Future just seemed lost in a mélange of odd disparities from callous bangers ("Covered N Money") to auto-tuned love ballads ("I Be U") and star-studded features ("Move That Dope").
The man born Nayvadius Wilburn still claims his throne as Atlanta, Georgia's trap king through the sludgy debauchery lauded by his Xanax-riddled #FutureHive crew. With each successive release, his life still seems like a dismal parade troubled with disparate and hopeless bouts of perkys, zans, pill-popping binges due to a bad breakup and an unapologetic embrace of his ill-notoriety. Times have changed for Future, though. In 56 Nights, he raps, "Activas, the only thing that can relax me," in "Trap Niggas," and "Fell in love with that drink/I need it" in "Purple Comin' In": both crystallized realizations of his downward-spiraling life that sound more dejected the more you pay attention. But while violence and drugs loom around every corner, there was still a conscience among the unfiltered inebriation.
Now, with albums like Dirty Sprite 2 through Evol, that self-consciousness is gone. Future poses as a supervillain gone off-kilter with an unabashed recklessness. You can hear the codeine slosh against Styrofoam cups as you see the grime of cigarette butts lined along ashtrays as he raps in "I Serve Base," flowing on being "Baptized inside purple activas," or in The Weeknd-assisted "Low Life": "Turn a five star hotel into a traphouse / Flood my cross with ice, getting money my religion." Future doesn't want to be your role model and he does so with no remorse.
