Review Summary: Albums a banger every song slaps like hell
This is Future’s most underrated ***. Not so much underrated by Future fans so much as by “rap critics”, because any real Future fan knows the amount of classics this tape has. I remember being irritated at the time of its release because everyone was ball washing the first song “Aint No Time” and putting “kicking foreign saint laurent watch how i walk” or whatever it is in their instagram captions, and I knew then like i know now that thats the weakest song on the ***ing thing.
Now I think its a pretty good song but I still 9/10 never get to it because I always go straight for “In Her Mouth”, one of the great straight testosterone-enablers in Future’s catalogue ( see songs like “Monster” & “Rent Money”). A lot of people look down on this tape, “Purple Reign” and the self titled joint because they feel like the guy wasn’t breaking new ground and was making music too similar to his famous 2014 run. I hate to make a sweeping generalization, but I feel like a lot of those critics who feel that way aren’t the same type of rap listener that I am, which is more of a mixtape listener. To me the “classic rap album” mold, especially the “classic debut rap album” mold, while certainly capable of producing actual dope records, isn’t usually as rewarding as the great mixtape runs.
The definitive examples of this are Gucci Mane & Lil Wayne, two artists who have at least a dozen 5/5 mixtapes between them and arguably one classic commercial studio album (Wayne’s “Carter III”). In my opinion, the majority of the best rap albums since about 15 years ago have technically been mixtapes. Now there are mixtapes that are really albums, like Drake’s “Thank Me Later” and Tyler, the Creator’s “Bastard”, and there are real mixtape mixtape’s like Lil Wayne’s Dedications, “Chicken Talk” by Gucci Mane, or “Bang 2” by Sosa. I would argue “EVOL” and most of Future’s great work is of the later category but I could see an argument for the former in some cases.
Of course, every artist is different, and its definitley easiest to understand “EVOL” relative to Future’s catalogue as a whole. Future continuing to cruise through and crush using his trendsetting flows is more fun than say his second studio album’s “Honest”’s seemingly more deliberate style of songwriting. Whether Future’s style of recording is really as quick and off the cuff as it has been depicted is unknown to me and irrelevant, as it legitimately does sounds like he’s creating it in front of you. A lot of raps, many of my favorites, don’t sound as natural as any Future song, which has much to do with the words he chooses as the million dollar voice he says them with.
Some of the Future’s best one liners are on this album, from “In Her Mouth”’s “Im tryna *** the DA lady in her mouth tho” to “Seven Rings” “Most my niggas pop xans unemployed”. Yes, Future is actually a brutal artist, a villain and a bad role model in a lot of ways (the addictive decadence of “Xanny Family” and “Program”), but being so makes the his powerful preformances in songs like “Lil Haiti Baby” and “Lie to Me” feel like he’s taking you to church.
That of course has as much to do with the beats as the man rapping over them. The beats on this album are ***ing crazy. My personal favorite producer is TM88, and while “Seven Rings” is top 15 of all time, the best beat on this *** still might be the close “Fly *** Only”. I’m pretty sure that song and “Maybach” are part of the reason why theres all these little guitar riffs in rap again (my new favorite rappers Gunna & Lil Baby are the main guys I’m thinking about, see “Ohh Okay”, “Sold Out Dates” and “Leaked”). While “Codeine Crazy” perfectly ended “Monster” with a beautiful melancholic haze, “Fly *** Only” closes “EVOL”, Future’s most underrated and possibly most savage project like he’s Clint Eastwood riding into the horizon “I’m strapped with that ratchet I’m strapped with that bath and that ape.”
