Future's new album The Wizrd comes out later this week. And whether it's good or bad, it occurs to me that as we wind down the decade, Future is inarguably one of the major rappers, really one of the major artists in general, of the 2010s. And though I didn't think much of him when he started appearing on the charts with "Racks" and "Tony Montana," he's been so prolific in the last 8 years, with so many good and great albums and mixtapes, that there's easily enough there for a deep cuts playlist. And he's been so ubiquitous with singles and features that it's worth stopping to look at how many great songs never got major chart action.

Future deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Maybach
2. Thought It Was A Drought
3. Chek
4. I Be U
5. Damage
6. You Deserve It
7. Lay Up
8. Hate The Real Me
9. On 2 Us
10. Freak Hoe
11. Juice
12. Throw Away
13. Digital Dash (with Drake)
14. Maison Margiela
15. Straight Up
16. Made Myself A Boss
17. Deeper Than The Ocean
18. Mink Flow (with Young Thug)
19. Walk On Minks
20. Inside The Mattress
21. My
22. Afterlife
23. Feds Did A Sweep
24. Testify
25. 56 Nights

Track 9 from Dirty Sprite (2011)
Track 16 from Streetz Callin (2011)
Track 17 from Astronaut Status (2012)
Tracks 6 and 15 from Pluto (2012)
Track 21 from Pluto 3D (2012)
Track 14 from No Sleep with DJ Esco (2013)
Track 4 from Honest (2014)
Track 12 from Monster (2014)
Track 7 from Beast Mode (2015)
Track 25 from 56 Nights (2015)
Track 2 and 10 from DS2 (2015)
Track 12 from What A Time To Be Alive with Drake (2015)
Track 20 from Purple Reign (2016)
Track 1 from EVOL (2016)
Track 11 from Project E.T. with DJ Esco (2016)
Track 23 from FUTURE (2017)
Tracks 5 and 24 from HNDRXX (2017)
Track 18 from Super Slimey with Young Thug (2017)
Track 3 from Kolorblind with DJ Esco (2018)
Track 19 from Superfly: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (2018)
Track 8 from Beast Mode 2 (2018)
Track 22 from Wrld On Drugs with Juice WRLD (2018)

[2020 edit: now that Future has officially put Monster, Beast Mode, 56 Nights, and Purple Reign on streaming services, I've made some updates to the playlist]

I had to be petty and use Future's one solo track from the album with Juice WRLD, but "Afterlife" is just so good. Some of these songs have been club and mix show staples or have been pretty influential without being mainstream hits. After all, what would Travis Scott say every 30 seconds on every song if Future had never made "Straight Up"?

Like one of his early mentors, Gucci Mane, Future has mastered the art of making multiple mixtapes a year with all original production, no remixes or freestyles. But it's only been in the past couple years of the streaming era that it's become customary for major label rappers' mixtapes to come out through their labels on iTunes and Spotify. So Future's catalog is a little spotty in terms of what is or isn't available -- some mixtapes like Astronaut Status and Beast Mode are readily available, while a lot of his most popular tapes like Monster, 56 Nights, F.B.G.: The Movie, and the original Dirty Sprite are not. I was able to include some tracks from Monster and Dirty Sprite and Streetz Calling and Purple Reign via bootlegged mixtapes uploaded to Spotify, but those are sometimes incomplete songs and could disappear at anytime. With artists like Wiz Khalifa and Gucci getting their classic mixtapes up on streaming services in recent years, it would be great to see Future follow suit, it just doesn't make sense that songs like "Codeine Crazy" and "Throw Away" aren't readily available.

One of the things that has really made Future's catalog great is that he's brought out the best in so many producers, helping them get their first or biggest hit or getting different sounds from them. So I wanted to highlight deep cuts produced by people who've done some of his hits, like "Mask Off" producer Metro Boomin ("Thought It Was A Drought," and "Freak Hoe"), "Turn On The Lights" producer Mike WiLL Made It ("Mink Flow"), "Used To This" producer  Zaytoven ("Lay Up" and "Feds Did A Sweep"), "Same Damn Time" producer Sonny Digital ("My"), "March Madness" producer Tarentino ("Juice"), "Fuck Up Some Commas" producer Southside ("Testify" and "Maybach"), "Throw Away" producers Nard & B ("You Deserve It" and "Inside The Mattress"),  and "Crushed Up" producer Wheezy ("Afterlife").

There's a great clip from the new Future documentary released for the new album where Andre 3000 says "man, Future makes the most negative inspirational music ever." And he really has kind of created his own lane even though he kind of rose out of the same lean-and-AutoTune lane that Lil Wayne and a lot of other rappers were in at the beginning of the decade. His more emotional material like "I Be U" or all of HNDRXX, he's really put his own stamp as a songwriter on Atlanta rap, kind of part of the trap scene but not really talking about the trap in most of his songs. Sometimes I wonder to what degree the self-destructive self-loathing perspective of songs like "Hate The Real Me" is just a persona he writes from, but that's mostly because I hope he isn't miserable in real life.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 13, 2019 at 8:52 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.