In a 2013 documentary about his career, Canadian DJ and producer Ryan Hemsworth commented on the evolution of Future as a rapper.
“I feel like Future is becoming the rap-game Elliott Smith, in a way,” he said. “Which is the perfect thing to exist.”
The comparison of the Atlanta rapper to an icon of ’90s alternative music might seem ridiculous, but it’s more apt than some of Smith’s dedicated fans might care to admit. And since 2013, it’s a comparison that has only become more accurate. Following an ugly split with R&B songstress Ciara, Future’s music has become an increasingly insular and debaucherous examination of the failings of life and love — themes that repeatedly appear in Smith’s songs.
Until now, the high point of Future’s post-Ciara work was 2014’s Monster, a mixtape that painfully probed the still-fresh wounds of an ended relationship — and medicated that pain with codeine, cash and women.
But even following a 2015 that launched him into the stratosphere of rap popularity, Future is still pouring his soul — and lots of lean — into his music. His latest release, the menacing EVOL, is more closely related to Monster than it is last year’s whip-ready Dirty Sprite 2.
While DS2 tracks like “The Percocet and Stripper Joint” offered brief moments of reflection, the vast majority of its songs seemed to serve as a soundtrack to the type of life Future was living. It’s easy to imagine “Freak Hoe” and “Stick Talk” blaring in the background of hotel-room parties and smoked-out studio sessions.
But EVOL‘s 11 songs tell the gut-wrenching stories of Atlanta’s favorite Auto-Tuned trapper instead of solely promising to be party-starters.
While the 808-backed trap beats are deceptively aggressive — and, as the seasick synth on “Xanny Family” proves, occasionally unsettling — Future’s vocals rarely offer cause for celebration. Alternately using Auto-Tune to hide and create emotion, Future’s vocals come off both broken and ferocious — for every subdued, xanned-out rap track like album opener “Ain’t No Time,” there’s an incredibly emotive chorus like the soaring hook of standout “Lil Haiti Baby.”
For someone who — if his lyrics are to be believed — spends more time faded than sober, Future’s recollections of late nights spent in the company of beautiful women and bottles empty by the morning are remarkably sharp. Lines like “She wrapped up in plastic, got coke in the mattress/ All of this shit is about living lavish/ This money, these cars and these bitches, these carats” offer photographic portrayals of scenes too explicit for Instagram.
While rappers have used money, women and drugs as examples of status for decades, Future rarely sounds like he’s enjoying — or even proud of — what he raps about. Hollow-sounding brags and ribald rhymes pepper the album, but compared to the generally dark tone, seem more like the contractual fulfillment of some unspoken rap code.
“Low Life,” a late-album highlight, features The Weeknd, whose verse sheds the newfound pop appeal in favor of a return to his House of Balloons excess. In many ways, it’s a song that exemplifies the depravity both Future and The Weeknd have used as the backdrop of their music for years, but in 2016, any glorification has been replaced with cautionary tales of a party lifestyle gone wrong.
“Turn a five-star hotel to a traphouse/ Roaches everywhere like we forgot to take the trash out,” Future raps without hesitation.
In the six album-length projects Future has released since Monster, he’s covered a lot of similar material, namely, the hazards of his post-breakup life. But EVOL is the first that manages to convincingly blend his banger-oriented beat selection and his moving, occasionally horrifying lyrics. Regardless of whether every story Future tells can be believed — he’s currently involved in a $15 million libel lawsuit with Ciara — he’s still making music that puts the listener in his head. Which, as EVOL shows all too well, can be a scary place.
