How Future Rewrote Rap in His Own Image
It isn’t hyperbole to claim that the rapper is one of the 2010s’ most essential artists. Narcotized, addled, and sometimes tender, Future has spent the past decade making whatever music he wants: trap ballads, twerk anthems, petty kiss-offs, trippy blues. His superpower is his ability to smear emotional states into odd collages, his protean voice ascending to the peaks of exuberance or plunging to the depths of misery. In a single moment, a Future song can pivot into the sublime, altering what came before it and everything after. Future is chaos unleashed and distilled. Though he’s got fewer Grammys than