In an interview with The FADER, Future said he was tired of the negative headspace he’s inhabited in much of his recent music: Despite all he’s achieved in his post- Honest second act - as he puts it on “Never Stop,” “I’m living my second life, it’s so amazing” - he seems ready for a change. We all know how spurious rappers’ retirement claims tend to be, and - especially in the wake of recent end-of-career threats from Lil Uzi Vert and Rae Sremmurd - it seems more likely that a workaholic like Future is trying to kick off a new era of his career rather than ride off into the sunset at 35 (especially with rumors of a new $50 million record deal floating around). It seems fitting, then, that Future called The WIZRD - his final release under his current contract with Epic - something along the lines of a “final chapter” in two separate interviews from last week. And he hammers home his interest in looking back by splicing in samples of two of his older songs at fitting moments during the album: 2014’s open-hearted “Honest” (during the unapologetic “Temptation”) and 2015’s weighty “Slave Master” (before a neck-snapping beat switch in the middle of “Baptiize”). His gaze on the album spans his entire career, recounting everything from his initial glow-up (“Came from whippin’ out the bowl, Tom Ford suit and tie” on “ Never Stop” ) to the ups and downs of his recording career (“I done been considered a failure, it don’t faze me” on that same song) to his enviable tax bracket (even among rap’s most wealth-obsessed albums, you’d be hard-pressed to find mentions of the words “rich,” richer,” and “richest”) to the darker side of his legacy (“Got the whole world takin’ Xans” on “Overdose” ). The WIZRD is deeply self-referential, going beyond Introspective Future’s usual self-evaluation and sounding at times like a hall of fame acceptance speech.ġ0 Best Songs From Future's 'The WIZRD' Album Ranked: Critic's Pick Whereas Future spent 2014-2018 pushing ever forward, relentlessly recording and burrowing further into his own psyche, he’s now taken a moment to step back and survey his legacy. His latest album, Future Hndrxx Presents: The WIZRD, introduces a new titular persona whose perspective is so much more seasoned than any of its predecessors that it borders on near-mystical omniscience. But to say outright that Future has spent the past five years retreading the same ground belies both the depth of his content and his ability to subtly, continually reinvent himself. To some degree, you can see that he’s found a successful formula and stuck to it.

Since 2014’s Monster, Future’s been locked into a highly productive groove that’s yielded five studio albums, five mixtapes, four joint releases with other rappers, a film soundtrack, and 20 Top 50 singles on the Hot 100 as a lead or featured artist.

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