Review Summary: Emptiness.
As lambasted and ridiculed as Will Robinson's assessments of
DS2 were, there's truth to his insistence that there's something deeper to Future than his trapping surface insinuates. The broader narrative of Future- one where a man out of love becomes a transgressive outsider- means that there is an impressively sad undercurrent to his otherwise conventional bangers. Take
EVOL, an album whose title exists as an on-the-nose metaphor for a pitiful love life. It's symptomatic of what becomes of a guy who cheats on his fiancé and abandons their child; that is, deeply troubled, saddening, and mired in constant crisis. But that's just what festers underneath the music; refuse to dig deeper (as I imagine will be the case for many) and
EVOL is a functional continuation of Future's impressive 18-month stronghold on trap culture.
If it sounds safe to assume then that
EVOL is more of the same for Future, you'd be correct. As per usual, his flow rarely rises from a careless mumble, muttering about vices as if they could be had on any given day (or at least that's what the subtlety of "In Her Mouth" implies). Yet still, as one can expect from a man who made the asinine "F
uck Up Some Commas" his motto,
EVOL revels in its smuttiness. Most of the time, as in "Lil Haiti Baby", he's shameless about his habits ('
Dumpin’ back these pills / I feel my head explodin’') and incredulous to the point of vileness ('
You want an R&B chick / shawty it ain’t nothin’ to get her', and, '
Oh, you want my life, that's la famil, that's all I know'). It's most pained over moment, "Low-Life", is a sinister reminder of how scum coalesces, a back and forth between The Weeknd and Future about who has more bragging rights for being a sh
itty individual. More than that, it's a collaboration that appears integral to the structure of the record: compared to Drake, whose pitch-perfect mockery of Future's flow on
DS2's only guest verse grounded the ridiculously vapid lyricism, The Weeknd offers an articulated rebuttal to the vile boasting rampant across
EVOL. Not that any of that boasting amounts to much; Future's worldview is one of constant dissatisfaction, a fact he remains both painfully aware and willfully ignorant about. Despite the possibility for broader analysis,
EVOL is successful because, first and foremost, it makes good on its talk of cheap thrills and casual vulgarity. Considering how downtrodden and serious
DS2 could become, and how disappointingly mild
What a Time to Be Alive and
Purple Reign were, Future hews closer to the attitude of his mixtapes to great effect. The resulting duality- a consistently brilliant rap album coupled with a problematic narrator- constructs
EVOL as a genuine attempt to take this whole trap fad seriously.
In much the same way that
DS2 reached its conclusion with a deeply flawed ballad in "Blood on the Money",
EVOL wraps up with "Fly Sh
it Only", an attempt to consolidate Future's efforts into a 'real' album. It's admirable; even if it isn't a good song (it isn't), it confirms his ambitions to humanize and define music that is inherently without much meaning. On the surface,
EVOL is adept at the sort of trap bangers that made the last 18-months of Future hype an omnipresent movement for assholes everywhere. Taken as a serious case for trap's legitimacy, it's a sullen comment on the emptiness brought about by a lifestyle defined by decadence. It's not pleasant, but it's enough to make being an ignorant dick sound quite compelling.
