From Beyoncé’s interwoven Renaissance and Cowboy Carter albums to Ye and Ty Dolla $ign’s nonetheless(?)-unfurling Vultures trilogy, 2024 is shaping as much as be the yr of the franchise album.
Though sequels and spin-offs have gotten a reasonably dangerous rap currently because of Hollywood’s latest manufacturing proclivities (taking a look at you, Marvel!), franchises may be enjoyable! In spite of everything, they’re imagined to be: the innate familiarity of some grounding themes, motifs or characters offers the inspiration for a stage of exploration that standalone titles can not provide. What makes franchises fall flat on each movie screens and document gamers, nevertheless, is aimless retreading of the identical floor as the primary installment. Enter Future & Metro Boomin’s We Nonetheless Don’t Like You.
Initially revealed throughout the announcement of their Billboard 200-topping We Don’t Belief You album, We Nonetheless Don’t Belief You arrives as a sequel to what’s already one among probably the most impactful LPs of 2024. Even exterior of its culture-shifting collaborations with Rick Ross and Kendrick Lamar, March’s We Don’t Belief You triumphed as a result of it’s a remarkably constant effort throughout all 17 tracks. With a bonus mixtape added as a second disc, We Nonetheless Don’t Belief You boasts an amazing 25 tracks – and that disregard for each brevity and high quality management ends in a document that’s notably irritating, as a consequence of how avoidable its shortcomings are.
As is the case with so many of those information with gargantuan tracklists, there’s album buried someplace within We Nonetheless Don’t Belief You. With some assist from The Weeknd on the sparkly opener, Nonetheless instantly situates itself in a distinct, but adjoining, sonic lane to that of its predecessor. Doused in Daybreak FM-esque synths and an attractive bassline, “We Nonetheless Don’t Belief You” seems to sign a extra pop- and R&B-facing Future – that followers would have probably embraced — compared to the straight rap he opted for on We Don’t Belief You. Nonetheless, the album largely abandons that path virtually as rapidly because it first teases it.
In a method, the document’s second and third tracks – the hedonistic Chris Brown-assisted “Drink N Dance” and the fiery “Out of My Fingers” — are emblematic of the 2 divergent paths the album tries to concurrently wind its method round. The previous finds Future and Metro shifting the topic of their mistrust – this time they’re extra involved with disloyal lovers as a substitute of Drizzy Drake – whereas the latter finds them doubling down on the blows from their final album. “Ain’t goin’ towards my mans to f—ok on his b—h, I’m gon’ f—ok up these bands/ Bought too many choices, they meet my demand, my workforce, we completed spinned/ You went towards the gang, you learn what I’m saying, it’s out of my palms,” he spits.
In the end, the duo don’t decide to the R&B bent that grants the album the vast majority of its standout moments, nor do they absolutely shift who they’re now not trusting. As a substitute, the album is overstuffed with misses that lack the urgency and verve of these on We Don’t Belief You. “Jealous,” “Got here to the Get together” and “Mile Excessive Reminiscences” are all high-quality tracks and welcome additions to the Future-Metro cannon, however extra forgettable numbers like “Luv Dangerous B—s” and “Overload” have a tendency to easily float by, leaving no lasting impression in any respect. Once you’re working throughout the self-imposed confines of a franchise, forgettable merely doesn’t reduce it. As a result of their partnership is so golden, Future and Metro aren’t actually able to making dangerous songs, however when their complacency begins to point out and so they then fall into the quantity-over-quality entice, nevertheless, the returns are sadly underwhelming. A few of these tracks don’t even have sufficient sauce to perform as victory laps.
The final time Future put out new albums in such fast succession was 2017. With Future and Hndrxx – which made joint historical past with their back-to-back No. 1 debuts on the Billboard 200 – Future supplied up one rap tape and one R&B tape, catering to each side of his sonic profile and the totally different pockets of his fanbase. If We Don’t Belief You runs parallel to Future, then We Nonetheless Don’t Belief You finds its Hndrxx similarities in standout tracks like “Proper 4 You.” By an interpolation of Boyz II Males’s seminal “Finish of the Highway,” Pluto delivers his tackle a grandiose energy ballad with drums that echo the digital really feel of late-2010s dancehall. There’s additionally the Weeknd-featuring “All to Myself,” which is constructed round a pattern of The Isley Brothers’ 1996 gem “Let’s Lay Collectively.” Right here, Future and Metro infuse a beloved soul monitor with their singular stream-of-consciousness entice balladry. With a deal with emotional betrayal that bridges the seemingly disparate types of the duo’s personal music and the samples they construct upon, “All to Myself” and “Proper 4 You” are the symbols of the album We Nonetheless Don’t Belief You had the potential to be.
Nonetheless does ultimately discover its method again to its synthy beginnings, however that second is robbed of its full-circle really feel due to how bloated the document is. The electro-pop echoes return on “Beat It” and blossom on “All the time Be My Fault” — which options one other profitable visitor look from The Weeknd – however the album exhausts its welcome by the point they seem. After all, J. Cole seems on disc one nearer “Pink Leather-based,” with a verse through which he laments not following Future’s womanizing lead earlier than pondering if it’s actually price his “peace.” Whereas he flows as deftly as ever, the verse withers within the shadow of final week’s Lamar apology and exit from the Massive Everybody battle. What’s attention-grabbing, nevertheless, is how the verse’s thorny evaluation of private progress echoes the feelings Cole expressed in his rationalization of why he couldn’t stand by “7 Minute Drill.”
For the six tracks that comprise disc two of We Nonetheless Don’t Belief You, Future cedes the ground to Breakfast Membership host Charlamagne tha God, who, regardless of his usually problematic historical past, proclaims some exhausting truths. “It’s not a Massive Three, it’s a Improbable 4,” he says by way of an outdated radio dialogue. “And Future is in that.” Predictably, the following tracks discover Future stepping again into the braggadocious straight rap bag of We Don’t Belief You, tapping Lil Child (“All My Life”) and A$AP Rocky (“Present of Fingers”) as visitor stars. Whereas the Rocky collaboration contained probably the most buzzed-about disses to return from the sequel set (“N—as in they emotions over ladies, what, you damage or somethin’? / I smash earlier than you birthed, son, Flacko hit it first, son”), it’s “Crossed Out,” with its rage rap-esque synths and pristine manufacturing, that stands out as the most effective of the bunch.
With over 40 new tracks from Future and Metro Boomin in below a month, it’s exhausting to shed a tear over the missteps on We Nonetheless Don’t Belief You. Nonetheless, each hip-hop titans have confirmed themselves to be greater than able to curating actually transformative album experiences, so this providing is disappointingly flaccid. Marred by sloppy sequencing and desperately in want of some fat-trimming, We Nonetheless Don’t Belief You is a high-quality playlist for the trip again residence from the membership – when you decode all of the s–t-stirring drama the set has to supply, you gained’t be listening that intently anyhow.
