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”).