He’s been referred to as “ Beyonce for dudes” and it makes sense. His background, along with his tormented aura and his habit of keeping most of his personal life private, are primarily responsible for the near-folk hero status he enjoys. He didn’t invent it, but he’s furthered the tradition of auto-tuned trap confessionals more than any of his contemporaries to the point that this style is ubiquitous in today’s rap landscape. Most impressively though, he took his brand of honesty, relentlessness, and excess and made it the blueprint for countless rappers after him. We’re currently living in an period where Future is both one of the elders and most progressive artists in rap today. Instead of letting these failures affect his career, Future coped with these losses by going on a mixtape run that few but Lil Wayne and Gucci Mane can rival, producing an unimpeachable trilogy of albums exploring pain, darkness, and perseverance drawn from real life experiences that you could not only relate to, but party hard as hell to as well.
Their relationship was the impetus for the (at the time) disappointing Honest, and after they broke up their situation became gossip column fodder and put Future in a negative light with much of the public. He publicly fell in (and out of) love with Ciara, with whom has a child. This era of his music saw him noticeably deviate from the content that propelled him into fame and was weighed down by unnecessary guest appearances, a common complaint about many of the tracks on those projects. Songs like “Turn On the Lights” and “Trophy” while good, were appeals to the mainstream. Although those records helped raise his profile, the products he released were not up to the standard that many of his fans had grown accustomed to. After the initial mixtape/street album era of his career he began to dabble in more pop-leaning sounds on his first studio albums Pluto and Honest. It wasn’t always an easy journey for the man born Nayvadius DeMun Wilburn.
Nine years into his career he’s now one of the most bankable mainstream artists in the world with sellout tours, five number 1 albums, and numerous platinum certifications under his belt. Future rose through the mixtape circuit creating club anthems, tales about his battles with his inner demons, and songs that cover some of both.