WE STILL DON’T TRUST YOU

Card-carrying members of the #FutureHive remember where they were on the two consecutive weekends of February 2017 when rap’s reigning king of gorgeously toxic masculinity dropped a pair of albums that nailed the yin and yang of the whole Future thing. The first one, simply titled <i>FUTURE</i>, exemplified his singular breed of haunted club crushers, like “Mask Off”, a Metro Boomin joint that became his highest-charting single at the time. Hot on its heels was <i>HNDRXX</i>, named for his softer, trippier side, a buoyant return to the romance of his <i>Pluto</i>-era hits. Both albums debuted at No. 1 and felt like a return to form for a rapper who’s had more thrilling returns to form than just about any other rap star of the past 15 years. A similar feeling floats on the breeze with the release of <i>WE STILL DON’T TRUST YOU</i>, Future’s second collaborative album with Metro Boomin in less than a month. From the spacey and vaguely French disco pulse of the Weeknd-featuring title track, you get the sense that <i>WE STILL DON’T TRUST YOU</i> is the <i>HNDRXX</i> to <i>WE DON’T TRUST YOU</i>’s <i>FUTURE</i>—a balmy sunrise after a dark night of the soul. That feeling is confirmed by the shimmering bacchanalia of “Drink N Dance” and the Brownstone-sampling “Luv Bad Bitches”, an instant addition to the canon of Future’s best love songs (“I like good girls, but I love, love, love bad bitches!”). Metro’s productions have rarely sounded prettier, and Future Hendrix fires on all cylinders, reminding you that for all his red-eyed “fuck love” bangers, at his core he’s a romantic. Kendrick Lamar’s surprise verse on <i>WE DON’T TRUST YOU</i> reopened the “Big Three” debate floor; with <i>WE STILL DON’T TRUST YOU</i>, it’s time to start seriously considering the idea of the “Big Four”.