Future

Honest

While Pluto explored the depths of Future’s gritty, spacey Auto-Tune rap aesthetic, Honest peels back layers of emotional context, narrowing in on what truly makes his raps so compelling: the duality and sincerity of his character. 

It resists grandiose production flourishes, message songs, ambitious themes, run-on suites, and most of the other tropes rappers over-rely on to telegraph importance. Instead it just lets the bangers rip, freeing Future to cruise down his preferred lane unimpeded.

Honest surges with the self-assurance of an artist finally coming into his own. The bruisers are icepick sharp, the ballads restlessly toy with convention, and Future’s heightened ease with both makes Pluto look like a transitional album in retrospect, the dress rehearsal for this, the actual takeover.

The world of Future is as wobbly and as wonderful as ever, and thanks to Honest, it just got grand.

Breezy in its boldness (12 tracks, under 50 minutes), this is a heavily considered album from the only reasonable rap star around. 

Future is no longer “a rebel amongst conformists,” moving in his own “eccentric orbit,” as Pluto‘s ‘The Future Is Now’ maintained: he’s the sun at the center of the Atlanta solar system, and on Honest, he knows it.

Honest demonstrates Future's keen ear for production, as well as a sense of realism hidden between braggadocio lyrics, club hooks and reverberating production.

It’s not the classic balance of style and substance ushered in by the Dungeon Family’s first generation. But it does help further the argument that both elements aren’t mutually exclusive.