Future is not Boomin: Future and Metro Boomin’s new album does not live up to the hype

I really hope that rapper and producer Future isn’t the future of rap, as his most recent album “We Don’t Trust You” with producer Metro Boomin left me incredibly disappointed and wanting something new lyrically.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Future’s music, like his 2015 album “DS2,” an incredible mix of psychedelic production value and memorable beats within the sub-genre of trap music. But issues arise when Future never really stepped out of that sub-genre.

When I heard of the album’s release, I was excited to see how Future would collaborate with Metro, as I thoroughly enjoyed Metro’s 2022 album “Heroes & Villains.” The album had Future featured on “Too Many Nights” and “Superhero,” some if not the most popular tracks from the album. They’re also Metro’s top streamed songs on Spotify. 

Metro is known for collaborating heavily with a wide variety of rappers, having no lyrical songs without at least one artist accompanying him — creating a diverse range of sound which I love. Despite there being five different features on this album — including Travis Scott, Playboi Carti and Kendrick Lamar — the collaborations didn’t distinguish the songs from the repetitive trap-beat sound Future loves to fall back on.

It frustrates me when an artist isn’t willing to even try new things. This applies to all mediums of art, whether it’s music, filmmaking, painting or sculpting — trying new things to see if something sticks is a quintessential part of the arts. If an artist is good at something — for instance how Future is with trap music — then they should explore other things within that skill that could be good too, like a change in genre like R&B or more melodic storytelling.

Which brings me to another point, lyrically all of Future’s songs are very similar — centered around concepts with little to no deeper meaning, like on the track “Like That” where Future raps “20-carat ring I put my fingers down her throat — If I lose a carat, she might choke.” I’m not here to shame the “vulgarity” of modern rap music, but it’s just not appealing to listen to and doesn’t make much sense once you think about it for a second.

I’m not asking Future to be the Socrates of rap, I’m just saying that albums like Outkast’s “Stankonia” or Ms. Lauryn Hill’s “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” has not only songs that are catchy and replayable, but with actual depth and meaning beyond the incredible production value. 

I know that it’s hard to compare Future to these artists from the 90s, as he is a product of the current era of rap — relying heavily on fast-paced 808 beats and intricate productions — yet that doesn’t mean lyricism has to be lost. Even artists with features on this very album have had recent and popular music that has that depth. Travis Scott’s “Utopia” and Kendrick Lamar’s “Mr. Morale” have way more intricate lyrics in comparison to Future’s most recent work. 

Other trap artists have started to endeavor in these deeper meanings in just this past year, such as Yeat’s recent release “2093,” an album that I adore dearly and think is undoubtedly the best of 2024 so far. Yeat raps about his struggles with drug addiction and getting clean with lots of mental health advocacy while dropping some of the hardest beats I’ve ever heard. 

It’s possible to be a trapper while having meaning in your lyrics. 

On this album there’s legitimately no tracks that I can think of that actually stood out to me. I can’t even recall the name of a single song and I listened to it in its entirety twice before writing this. Sure, I liked three out of the 17 songs on the album but to me it isn’t that difficult to make a beat that sounds nice and lyrics that compliment it well. What was missing was variety. 

More could have been done, and I was expecting this knowing Metro’s ability to collaborate with so many different artists, yet I think Future falls short of creating anything different from the other albums he’s made, becoming the product of a mediocre formula for rap music.