Future (Weekend Two only)

Let me start this discussion with a set of bars from his new album's opener, "Thought It Was a Drought."
"I just f**ked your b*tch in some Gucci flip flops
I just had some b*tches and I made them lip lock
I just took a piss and seen codeine comin' out
We got purple Activis, I thought it was a drought."

Wha?  I don't even know how to unpack all of that.  I can tell you that Activis is a pharmaceutical company that makes Botox, an Alzheimers medicine called Namenda, an immunosuppressant drug called Restasis, as well as many other prescription drugs.  However, a search for "activis lean" brings up the fact that they also make a promethazine/codeine sizzurp, which must be what ol' Future is digging on in this song.  Ah, and they have apparently pulled that off the shelves because it was so popular with rappers and Bieber.  That must be the drought he is talking about.  I do know how to unpack all of that!  2.3 million listens.

Anyway, I've read about Future for a while, with Rolling Stone continually calling him the best new rapper.  Out of Atlanta, uses auto-tune a ton.  I got to see him play a show at Stubb's during SXSW a year or two ago, and I remember that he spent all of the time in between songs pimping the new album that was coming out the next week or something.  "'Honest,' dat new album, droppin' next week yoooooooooo!!  Get to the stoooooooooooooe!!"  And while I thought his tunes were pretty good, he had the unfortunate issue of the fact that most of his best known songs are ones where he only has a portion.  His best, from that Honest album, is one of my favorite tunes from the past few years of rap - "Move that Dope."  18.3 million spins.

That beat!  Yessir!  So Future only performs part of that - Pusha T and Pharrell each get a turn to kill it - like other tracks "Tony Montana" (ft. Drake) or "Magic" (ft. T.I.), or even other people's songs like Ace Hood's "Bugatti" or Rocko's "U.O.E.N.O." (made more famous for Rick Ross verse about Cosby-ing a girl).  Which meant he got the crowd all hyped up for a huge hit, and then did a single verse and switched the beat to the next thing.  Weak.  When he cranked the beat for "Move that Dope," the crowd went insane, but he did his verse and said the chorus, all in about a minute, and then shifted the beat to another song that he did for 45 seconds.  Disorienting and not very fun.

After seeing that show, I tried out Honest a few times, and other than "Move that Dope," I didn't get it.  Wasn't very original sounding or lyrically interesting to me.  This new album, DS2, just released in 2015, is better though.  Not great - he's not a story-teller, more of the type to grab hold of a phrase ("Blow a Bag" comes to mind) and just pound it to death with some brags about how awesome he is.  "Where Ya At" is a Drake collaboration that is pretty slick, and "I Serve the Base" has a dope ass beat.  "Freak Hoes" sounds like Too $hort.  For reasons I don't understand, the biggest song is called "F*ck Up Some Commas," and is his current most popular track with 22.7 million listens.

As far as I can tell, that entire song is about making money, and the commas bit is about moving the commas in the amounts of money he is getting.  As in, move the comma in $1,000 and you could have $100,000!  Kind of a stretch of an idea. Not a bad tune, but nothing nearly as good as "Move that Dope."  Another rapper talking about serving Katy Perry when talking about coke.  Weird.

Anyway, my experience would tell me that you could skip seeing him, because it will just be an annoying pastiche of his portions of hits, but with two full albums of his own stuff under his belt, he just might make for a better show now.  I don't know.  Good luck all you weekend 2 warriors!