Ahead of his new album, The Real Me, Future released the soul-searching single “Radio.” Throughout, he proclaims the song in fact isn’t for radio; instead, it serves as a moment of heavy introspection. “A lot of n****s want the spot when I don’t even want the crown/ Already legendary and never tryna talk about it,” he raps perceptively. Future is high-key aware of the expectations that surround him, and he set this album up as a means of solidifying his humanity.
The album starts out promising. “Fukk a Interview,” the opening track, is propelled by production that sounds like the beginnings of an apocalyptic lightning storm. Oddly enough, the first voice we hear is rapper and comedian Afroman. “Yeah, we did it!” he says in a clip from his victorious defamation lawsuit. “Freedom of speech! … God bless, power to the people.” The decision to include this clip seemed to indicate that Future was finally ready to tell his story and reveal the real him, by any means necessary. The only thing is, he doesn’t.
Instead of seeking introspection and sharing his findings with us, Future uses The Real Me to shift into cruise control. To be clear, it’s a mode that still places him ahead of the majority of his peers. With the exception of a few pop-adjacent songs (more on that later), the album sits in the same atmosphere as 2024’s MIXTAPE PLUTO, itself an homage to his family. The Atlanta rapper comes from a lineage of naturally-gifted creatives, the Dungeon Family. Composed of Organized Noize, Outkast, Goodie Mob, and others, the collective forever changed the trajectory of hip-hop with its genuine commitment to musicality, lyricism, and Southern ideals.
Related Video
Future re-commits to his origins on “No Misery,” with a clip from Andre 3000, who praises Future in the 2024 The Wizrd documentary for his approach to expressing his suffering. “Future has a certain pain behind what he’s doing,” Andre says through a distorted filter. “And you can call it soul, you can call it whatever, but to me it comes off as pain, where it comes straight off as pain. ‘And now, I’m gonna let y’all watch me balance the pain and we all on edge watching it.’” It’s a deep assessment, one that sets the stage for Future to share his most mortal experiences.
But in the very same song, he uses most of his time to back up the claim that “you’ll never fuck her better than I can.” It’s his most honest version of vulnerability, however insincere it may appear to those of us keeping up with his “collection.”
The “real” Future is the hitmaker. He locks into Super Future mode for most of the album, spitting depraved, earworm rhymes over thrumming production handled by beatmakers not named Metro Boomin (ATL Jacob, DJ Spinz, Pharrell Williams, Southside, TM88, and Wheezy, among others). In particular, Future goes astronomically dumb on “Konnichiwa” and “Snow in Skyami,” two of his most vapid songs. They’re the antithesis of the mission of The Real Me, unless Future wants us to know that this is who he’s been all along. And maybe, just maybe, that’s what he’s doing.
On the droning, lazy “Weight Up,” Future straight-up sounds like he’s phoning it in. It’s a decent song on the surface, made up of all the necessary rap elements, but it has the same problem that most of The Real Me does. Future perfected his formula upwards of 10 years ago, and he hasn’t deviated from that plan since. As such, he’s become stagnant, adept at re-hashing cash shit while pretending to reveal his weaknesses. When he says, “Got heroin in my cup/ Smell it coming out my pores,” it sounds like he’s revisiting the unstoppable mode of arguably his best album, DS2. But here, the lyrics just sit plainly, unattached to a greater mission.
Future’s aversion to accountability — and in some instances, the flat-out truth — precedes him. The man who’s made a career off of dirty Sprite has repeatedly said he’s not beholden to it, or any other drug. “I don’t have to do it,” he told French video channel Clique TV in 2016. “It’s not a thing I have to do. I am sober.” That same year, he made the declaration that What a Time to Be Alive, his 2015 collaborative mixtape with Drake, “never happened.”
Since then, Future has traded in lies about his consumption and production for lies about his position in the Kendrick Lamar/Drake beef. In March 2024, Future released WE DON’T TRUST YOU with Metro Boomin, a project faithful to the artistic roots of the Atlantans. It was home to the incendiary “Like That” featuring Kendrick Lamar, a beef-igniting track that saw K-Dot reflecting on the status of the Big Three: himself, J. Cole, and Drake. “There was a beef?” Future asked with a smirk in response to GQ in November 2024. “I didn’t even know there was a beef. I didn’t even know they had nothing going on. I ain’t never participated in rap battles, man.”
Ahead of The Real Me’s release, Future asked his fans: “Who u think featured on my album?” Trick question: There are no features. Pluto has made a hell of a career for himself through his rap dominance and selective emotional storytelling, but he’s become just as well-known for his little white lies. Without getting too deep, how can we trust Future to show us the real him when he’s often operating from a foundation of deception?
