Review Summary: Is definitely crazy
All the big douchebag-music-website lists are putting
Dirty Sprite 2 the album higher on their “year end lists”, basically saying it is more top 5 of 2015 than
56 Nights the mixtape, which is absurd. To put it in future laymen terms, if Future is Michael Jackson in the 80’s,
56 Nights is
Thriller and
Dirty Sprite 2 is if Michael Jackson made another album immediately after (in 80’s like 1984) with more good songs, but not as many 5/5’s (lol), and for some reason some of the biggest songs from
Off the Wall &
Thriller tagged on the end,. Talking about music like this is, admittedly, nauseating, but I guess what it comes down to is that I’m not a strong enough writer and “writer-thinker”* to not talk about (think about) what I want to without in some way directly engaging in the type of discourse I’m attempting to shy away from. It’s kind of like how you feel when you can’t tweet exactly the way you want because of the word count so you feel like you have to dumb up what you’re saying (unless you’re the type to post tweets repeatedly like you’re in a conversation) (idk I don’t really use twitter that much beyond bi monthly stalks of various chiraq beefs and associated chiraq beef rumormongers).
Basically, the dissonance between what I feel and what I’ve observed, the later of which, at least in the model within which I’m working, is, ostensibly, someone’s stated opinion. Realistically, it’s more likely an aggregate opinion from the staff of a website including writers covering a variety of types of music or something like that, but, whatever, fugetabadid. Now I’m seeing the 8 song (plus 2 skits) as not just “album of the year” but “kind of like Thriller”. And obviously this is not 1982 and when I say 56 Nights is like Thriller it’s in a relative sense, in other words, I’m aware that “March Madness” and “Trap Niggas” weren’t played on MTV around the clock (although for all I know they are) and that none of the aforementioned “hits” went to “number one on the Billboard charts”, but that they and the body of work that contained them attained enough of both celebrity capital and my personal adoration for me to rationalize a “
56 Nights Is Like
Thriller (Especially more so than
Dirty Sprite 2 is like
Thriller)” type model. All of this was triggered by noisey saying “if DS2 is the blockbuster album that took over the summer…” or something in their year-end list blurb on
56 Nights and I was thinking “darfing, first of all,
DS2 ahead of
56 again, sheep, and hey
56 Nights sound way more like a blockbuster to me it has more hits bla blabbla…”. So thanks to them.
Now that all that garbage is out my brain, let’s talk about the good stuff, which is what all the aforementioned hoo-blah and hoo-blay was endured for, and that’s the music, which is ***ing crazy. You ever listen to an album for the first time and not have skip a song? Me neither, but my friend said he did with 56 (waiting for a confirmation of whether it’s also in his top 5) and it ended up getting him pregnant. If you didn’t know, DJ Esco compiled the tape from Future’s vast library of music after being imprisoned in Dubai jail for
56 Nights for having a small amount of pot at the airport. I don’t know if it was his intention to use practically all Southside beats (perhaps to keep in tandem with the all Zaytoven-helmed
Beast Mode) or it was just a natural result of his quest to articulate how he felt post jail through Future’s music, but regardless there is a consistent aesthetic throughout the work, and its black (as the cover dictates), and machinelike, as in the beats sound a lot like machines going on and off, of computers bleeping and blooping, albeit, tuned to melodic pitches and paired with deep, molten hot 808’s and ever hypnotizing hi-hats and snares. When Future dives into them, they become human, although the sheer strength of his inhabitance within the instrumentals assumes a work ethic or a presence otherwise suggesting he’s not entirely human (
Beast Mode indeed). From the word go, the relentless “Never Gone Lose”,
56 Nights is an album for driving fast, especially the song I just said, I would petition for it to be in the next Fast ’n’ Furious if I had real drive. It’s also an album for great (or just loud) speakers that reward a deep low-end (you haven’t heard “Trap Niggas” until you’ve heard it on a subwoofer with the Hip Hop eq)(which is the dumbass way of referring to good speakers and whatever EQ preferences you think you prefer). While every song fits the aesthetic, they all move and groove differently. “Purple Coming In”, the quintessential lean song of at least this year, bubbles up and then lurches and pops along, the 808’s dropping like flickering lights –
I got codeine on my bladder / I get it in like real one –and amidst these machines is a man getting jiggy. “Me No Compadre” sounds like a radar pleading with God, except perhaps in this song Future is God, judging by his Old-Testament like indignation
Seen a real nigga get indicted / seen some pussy niggas get some recognition
If the first four songs are the sounds of a man looking to scorch the earth, the last three are what you feel when you’re living in an earth scorched, one where the smog creates a pretty red sunset. They’re ballads, albeit the type where women are objectified, if still relied on
I didn’t want to *** her but the molly made me *** her even tho she average / *** on a basic bitch / we gon wake up and smoke on some blunt and *** / she gon keep it so real with a nigga that / Ima always come back and gon *** with her. They also have arguably the stickiest hooks and are unarguably the biggest hits from the album. When “March Madness” came out people were getting wet for that “emo-Future”, and with good reason, that song is a monster. Lately, and by that I mean like the past week (I’m always listening to this album) I’ve been digging “56 Nights”, the song, a lot more, probably because it’s the last one I figured out had a music video for it. Future’s such an addicting rapper to listen to, the way his flow bobs up and down, and he’s also really fun to sing along to. Obviously knowing the words to the songs you know makes it more fun to hear, but there’s something so quotable about virtually every line on this mixtape that only Future could be responsible for it.
This album is the ***, however I digest it. Whether that’s all at once, like the grand opera that it is, or if it’s hearing “Trap Niggas” on the radio and listening to the next hottest song off the tape on soundcloud and then slowly falling in love with each one, which is how I imagine I would’ve gotten into it if I didn’t download it when it came out and then left it on my computer unlistened for like three weeks. If I wanted to get someone into Future and I thought they were at least a little wavey I would show them this album. It’s short, aesthetically concise, and extremely rewarding. Every single song is a 5/5. If you don’t like it, you’re probably a bitch.
