To be honest, part of the reason the content cycle at Colossus has been slow for #NewMusicMondays is that there hasn’t been an overwhelming amount of music dropped in the first two months of this year. Later this week I will be covering another new album as a gift to you loyal readers but for now, let’s take a look at what Fire Marshall Future has to offer us. Being one of the first big rappers to drop a project in 2019, Future gives us easily the wordiest title to his seventh solo project, Future Hndrxx Presents: The WIZRD. While the man himself has shown us many personas over the years, this seems to be a culmination of all of his best styles and flows into one album.
This is also the 100th review on Colossus…so yeah props to that!
The Vocals:
Look…I am not going to bullshit you. I have never been a major fan of Future as a rapper. I think he is subpar at best. However, this project has a lot of different versions of him, some I like and some I don’t. He starts it off on “Never Stop” with an extremely introspective style, discussing his growth into fame. This is the kind of Future I have always found intriguing but he then moves right from “can’t forget where I came from” to “jumping on and off the jet”. Primarily, his lyrics throughout are braggadocious, rapping about money, chains, girls, and drugs. But if you are going out of your way to listen to a Future album in its entirety, you aren’t exactly anticipating politically charged tracks or deep, meaningful lyrics. Instead, you are more likely to be singing along to chorus like on “Promise U That”.
“Came in a car, you gon’ leave in a jet, I can promise you that (Yeah, yeah)
Came by myself, I’ma leave with your friends, I can promise you that”
Got to give him credit for rapping about his hobbies and extracurriculars!
The Beats:
Future worked with a really solid team here for the beats and nothing was really amiss. Southside, Billboard Hitmakers, and ATL Jacob all primarily worked on the album and it shows. The 808s throughout are killer, especially on “F&N”. Metro Boomin even hopped on “Stick to the Models” as pointed out by a Genius user. However, what is most evident throughout The WIZRD is Future’s producer influence. People often forget that as big as Future has gotten as a rapper, he was mixing beats first and truly helped cultivate Atlanta’s trap sound using combinations of 808s and snares. Even when he isn’t creating the beats on a majority of this album’s tracks, you can still see that he kept a heavy hand on how the beats were made.
The Production:
It’s not too often that a Future album or EP disappoints me in its production value however this one does for me. The album as a whole comes in at an hour and two minutes and with twenty tracks that seems short to me. A majority of the track lengths are under three minutes and for me that isn’t satisfying. At times I feel like I’m Michael Scott listening to the free sample of “Goodbye My Lover” over and over again with how short the tracks are. I mean “Crushed Up” and “Call The Coroner” are some of the most popular songs yet both are only two minutes. It just didn’t do it for me.
The Essentials:
“Never Stop”, “Crushed Up”, “Call The Coroner”, “Promise U That”, “Servin Killa Kam”, “First Off”, and “Faceshot”
The Rating:
It’s not that I would skip much of this album. Hell, I put seven of the twenty in the essentials. However, there is just a lot I know I won’t go back to. They just aren’t special to me, to be honest. For me, nothing will beat his 2017 releases: the self-titled FUTURE and the ever important HNDRXX project. With that said, The WIZRD gets a:
Soft 6
This album was good but not Future’s best work. Still a great listen though, especially if you are looking to get into his discography.
– Heff
Colossus Music 