ACL Review: Future

It’d be easy to dismiss the woozy flow of Atlanta rapper Future as mere mindless musings about Bugattis and bitches (there are plenty of both), but there’s beauty in his haunting depictions of the street level dope game.

“It don’t fuck with my conscience/ I serve my auntie that raw,” he raps on “Monster.” And later on “Blood on the Money”: “They got blood on the money and I still count it/ I can’t help the way I’m raised up.”

Those callous glimpses into street dystopia rep Future at his best. His more prominent partner on recent LP What a Time to Be Alive famously claims to have started from the bottom (paging Drake), but Future can more convincingly report “Live From the Gutter.” He crashed Drizzy’s headlining stage last weekend, yet the Champagne Papi didn’t return the favor on “Diamonds Dancing.”

Not that Future needed help poppin’ tags.

Just as DS2 (Dirty Sprite 2) currently outsells every other album in the country, the black- and blond-dreaded ATLien drew a massive crowd for an early evening turn up where the setting sun nearly matched the hue of his favorite syrup-laced soda.

“I just took a piss and I seen codeine coming out,” he rapped on “Thought It Was a Drought.”

Copious amounts of cough syrup, cannabis, and auto-tune can make Future’s delivery damn near unintelligible at times. Mumblecore isn’t just your favorite Duplass-filled indie movie genre anymore. It’s a whole style of trap-rap.