Arts & Culture

TEST SPIN: Future — Purple Reign

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The shtick that has turned Future into one of hip hop’s biggest superstars casts him as a drug-addled club rat, drinking lean to numb the pain; this was more or less the premise of his last album, DS2, which was a huge critical and commercial success. The updated hipster take on Future is that he’s a doomed, lovelorn soul who turns his druggy misery into art like a sizzurp-sipping Cobain. This kind of revisionism is necessary in order to listen to such mindless music without irony, because Future’s songs are unbelievably repetitive and dreary. But in a recent interview with The Source, Future as much as admitted that his persona is a fabrication designed to sell records. “I’m not like super drugged out or [a] drug addict,” he said.

Arts & Culture

JONES | They Made a Monster: Future’s Nihilistic Reinvention

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We love the story of a good Fall. Ever since the Garden of Eden, humans have lived in sin; and for as long as there have been sinners, others have relished the task of exposing them. It seems that few things fascinate us as much as a figure that rises to great heights and seems morally unimpeachable, and then is exposed as something else entirely. From Bill Clinton to Bill Cosby, our culture has a special appetite for those who claim to have high morals and are then exposed as ignoble imposters. Maybe this explains Future’s popularity.