The Earliest Bird: Top New Recorded Release 4-27-22 – 5-5-22, Future’s “I DON’T LIKE YOU” Reviewed

On the GQ cover story earlier this week, Elliot Wilson dubbed Future the best rapper around and if he was halfway decent on stage I might agree. The (per GQ) (here) “eight solo albums, 19 solo mixtapes, one collaborative album, four collaborative mixtapes, two EPs, and one soundtrack (for 2018’s Superfly). Worldwide, he’s been streamed over 30 billion times” superstar from Atlanta and riding on trap as high as he usually is was so bad on the Summer Sixteen tour he went from opening act to a coupla songs in the middle of Drake’s set.

I DON’T LIKE YOU, is the 38 year old trap guy’s ninth album and it is really excellent while being far from innovative: with a list of featured rappers that includes two songs with Kanye West and two with Drake, the heavy drugging and former hustler is not growing but is maintaining the brand here. If the autotune rapping is the typical fucked up on cough medicine slur sound, the rapping itself is first rate and Future’s sound is so unique that he complements Ye on “Keep It Burnin'” and his rapping so complex he doesn’t let Kodak Black (along with Kae Tempest, my choice for best rapper) steal it on “Voodoo” despite Future being the same old yayo and bitches and Kodak discussing the nature of good and evil.

The album is consistently excellent, mostly because the man can rhyme and is well witty, the cliches morph in on themselves and the best moments, “Voodoo” followed by “Holy Ghost” is the albums highpoint that doesn’t include Ye, are timeless trap on a sound that should have passed the mantle to drill with Pop Smoke (or at least Stormzy), Future sounds like a drug addict as he goes from high intensity to distracted and back.

I haven’t seen Future on stage in a coupla years but when I did he was too busy dicking around with backing tapes to do the job. Still, on record this is on a level with his Juice WRLD mixtape -about as high as he can get.

Grade: B+