For rap fans of a certain age, the exemplar of a superlative year is DMX’s 1998. In a year not short on hip-hop classics, the rapper rose above the crop with not one but two A+ albums released seven months apart. Future may never release a project quite as paradigm-shifting as It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot—few artists can—but when we look back on 2024, we’ll have to talk about the Atlanta wizard with a DMX-esque reverence.
Future’s been on prolific runs before: in the annals of hallowed contemporary rap mythology, the creative surge from late 2014 to summer 2015 that birthed the mixtapes Monster, Beast Mode, 56 Nights into the album DS2 is the stuff of legend. But there’s something extra impressive about a 40-year-old rapper going into his fourteenth year hitting a stride to drop 59 songs in one calendar year, where at least 40 of them are genuinely pretty fucking great.
Earlier this year, Future finally did what fans had been dreaming of for years and locked in with Metro Boomin, one of his most potent collaborators. The union yielded a bounty that still feels made up: two full-length projects, each indulging in the two different lanes Future has been peerlessly innovating for the last decade, trap and avant-garde R&B. The beats were some of Metro’s most lush and inventive to date, the bars were closer to Future’s peak than most of his last few projects, and his melodies even sharper. Even if they hadn’t set the stage for the World War I of rap beefs, we’d still be talking about both albums in any credible Best of the year conversations.
Now, fresh from a tour with Metro, Future isn’t content to ride the year out with some rest. Today he released Mixtape Pluto, a slight palette cleanser that is by design less adventurous than the Metro albums, but nevertheless keeps his hot streak alive and unprecedented. The intention behind the tape is set from its title and accompanying album art: this is Future aiming for a return to his Atlanta street roots, as underlined by depicting the late great Atlanta pioneer Rico Wade’s dungeon house, the home base for the last three decades of paradigm-shifting southern music stretching back from Future to Outkast.
There’s nothing as titanic as “Like That” or layups like “Type Shit,” but that’s kind of the point. Wisely, Metro doesn’t appear—there is such thing as overkill—and Future instead re-teams with early era producers like Southside and Atlanta trap staples like Wheezy and ATL Jacob for a reset of sorts. The tracks feel lightweight, in most cases barely exceeding two minutes long or less. There are no features or radio-ready hooks. This is Future back in the gym hoisting training shots up a month after winning the chip, asserting that he doesn’t need a Kendrick Lamar or Playboi Carti verse to keep his foot on the rap game’s neck.
