2015 was, in the opinion of this admittedly indie-rock addled columnist, the best year ever for rap music. Kendrick Lamar’s sprawling “To Pimp a Butterfly” loomed monolithically over everything released that year in any music genre. Lupe Fiasco returned with “Tetsuo & Youth,” his best record since his 2006 debut. Vince Staples’ “Summertime ‘06” was a conceptual double-album that absolutely banged.
2015 was also the year of the mixtape. Chance the Rapper’s watershed “Acid Rap” had set the stage in 2013 for future mixtapes as mainstream pop, and Drake picked up on that, breaking Spotify’s first-week streaming record with the retail tape “If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late.” But more interesting was Atlanta rapper Future’s 2015 run, in which he course-corrected a previously dubious career with the final two installments of his mixtape trilogy, “Beast Mode” and “56 Nights,” establishing himself as the top dog of the mixtape game.
Last Friday, Future released his self-titled fifth album, and it’s easily the least interesting of his career. Reviews have yet to trickle in, but they will be lukewarm. “Future” will be remembered as the last time recovering trapaholics cared about a Future album. But Future won’t fade into the past. His savvy mixtape blitz, starting in 2014 with “Monster,” is still rippling across the rap community and remains a master class in self-promotion and independent success on the internet.
Some basic background: prior to “Monster,” Future was sold as a pop rapper. He’d signed on with Epic Records and released his debut album “Pluto” in 2012 to polite critical reception and decent sales. His follow-up, 2014’s “Honest” continued the trend; see “I Won,” featuring none other than Kanye West. Prior to 2014, Future was marketed as a cool dude from Atlanta who really liked autotune, could sort of rap and occasionally sang a hook. He was a slightly edgier T-Pain with a massive budget.
With his mixtape trilogy, Future reinvented himself and re-wrote the rules of what a major label rapper could do when let loose on the internet. Each installment of Future’s mixtape trilogy was released for free, as per mixtape custom, and hosted on sites like DatPiff and HotNewHipHop. Call his new persona Future Hendrix, Super Future or Fire Marshall Future — it doesn’t matter; Future bent the internet to his will, and through his mixtapes, low-budget music videos and press coverage, transformed himself into his current Xanax-gobbling incarnation.
Future’s single contribution to the 2015 rap album canon was “DS2,” which stands for “Dirty Sprite 2,” a calculated throwback to his 2011, pre-Epic tape “Dirty Sprite.” Though a major label outing, it built on the bad vibes and Molly-fueled paranoia established by the mixtapes that preceded it. Devoid of easy radio fodder and more in line with Future’s mixtape persona, it earned him the greatest accolades of his career. Some publications, London-based experimental music journal “Wire” among them, named it one of the year’s best. but I’d disagree — “DS2” is almost too dark for its own good.
Since 2015, the mixtape has become the most exciting format for new music and one of the last frontiers to successfully balance experimentation and accessibility. Though few tapes have proved the revelation of Future’s trilogy, many of last year’s best rap outings could be found not on the shelves of a Best Buy, but nestled in the weirder corners of DatPiff, HotNewHipHop, or surprisingly enough, Apple Music, which hosted Young Thug’s “JEFFERY” tape and Chance the Rapper’s “Coloring Book.” Even the eternal trendsetter Kanye West took notice; it’s probably no surprise that “The Life of Pablo” was so off-the-cuff and stitched together. Future’s purple reign might be over, but his legacy is set.
