Behold the Future
Just for the fun of it, if you’re not particularly familiar with rap star Future, take a listen to, oh, “Rent Money.” It’s the first song on mondo-platinum Future’s self-titled CD, which came out in February right before his “Hndrxx” album, because Future is nothing if not prolific. In fact, those back-to-back releases respectively debuted at #1 atop the Billboard album chart in two consecutive weeks — something never accomplished by any other artist.
Future has scored dozens of hits since he broke out of hometown Atlanta in 2012, utilizing a not particularly unique gangsta rap formula. And yet it resonates in a big way. Anyway, as a representative sample, on “Rent Money,” Future’s weed-rotted voice mumbles a few lines in preamble, then a female choir, mixed way in the back, performs an eerie, three-note “Omen”-style riff that persists throughout the tune. An ominous church bell begins to sound, followed by a skittering, programmed beat and hiccupping bass line — and then Future kicks into the lyrical flow.
For the record, in “Rent Money,” Future has sex with a “rapper b____” and then an “R&B b____”; has a variety of styles of sex with an unnamed and presumed rival’s “baby mama” who later, ah, frolics with his “whole team” while he sips codeine; has sex with strippers in a Let jet; asks to be treated like Al Capone (though presumably not the “die in prison of syphilis” part); name-checks several expensive belongings and firearms; and uses the N-word liberally.
This isn’t A Tribe Called Quest, in other words. But who is? Even if Future breaks zero new ground, he’s one of the biggest hip hop artists in the world — so I suppose I’m the idiot here, and I also suppose he’ll probably sell out the Mohegan Sun Arena Sunday.