Future- Honest ALBUM REVIEW

My review for today will be on the new album from Future, titled Honest. Future is a very polarizing rapper for me. There are times where I feel this guy is a creative and interesting artist; like the song Turn on the Lights. That is a great song because it is unique, catchy, and has a great concept. On the other hand, Future has had moments where I feel he is no different than your average mainstream rap artist. He can be very generic and boring, but songs like Turn on the Lights give me hope for this new Future album. Will Future come through with a solid release, or will this be a mediocre project?

The rapping on this album was a mixed bag for me. Sometimes, Future's rapping really surprised me. I came into this album with very low expectations; Future has never been an impressive artist in terms of technical rapping ability. While he doesn't do enough here to make me believe he is a talented rapper, he was pretty solid. His best rapping comes on the intro song, Look Ahead. Future was on beat, switching up his flow, and some of his lyrics stuck with me. Other then this, Future doesn't have many memorable rapping moments here. I don't have a problem with this though, because this guy's best talent continues to be his ability to make excellent hooks. His hooks here are great, and this album just has so many catchy moments. I liked the hooks on Move That Dope, Honest, I Won, and Blood Sweat Tears. These tracks had good replay value, sometimes for only the hook and nothing else. The other thing that saves this album is the features. Are the regular mainstream names are here, but they bring a lot to the album. Pusha T slaughtered his verse on Move That Dope, Drake was great on Never Satisfied, and while it wasn't one of his better verses, I Won would've been boring if not for Kanye West. No feature on this album though, comes close to Andre 3000. On the song Benz Friendz, Andre dominates it, delivering a fantastic hook and an outstanding verse. He single-handedly made this song great. Overall with Honest, Future was a little spotty when rapping, but this album thrived with terrific hooks and features.

If there was one word describing the production on this album, it would be predictable. I didn't go into this album expecting dense, layered beats and I didn't get that. Honest is filled with Southern trap beats that you could find on a lot of other albums. This doesn't mean the beats were bad, though; I really enjoyed a lot of these instrumentals. First, I must talk about the one beat here that is different then all the others, Look Ahead. The production on this song was incredible. The drums on this song hit very hard, and made this track really strong and gritty. They mixed in with these booming claps and female vocal samples. This was the one beat on this album that was really dense, layered, and impressive. I was blown away by this instrumental. Other than that though, these were some pretty generic beats. While generic, this production does work for the album, as I would not want Future to be on anything too different. Move that Dope, My Momma, Never Satisfied, and Benz Friendz were my favorite beats in this stye from this album. I enjoyed some of these beats a lot, but overall, they were a bit too predictable.

HONEST WRAP UP
+Awesome hooks all over the album
+Features were really good, brought so much to the album
+Some pretty good beats
-Future wasn't a very good MC, only was good on one song
-Samey production

Best: Look Ahead, Never Satisfied, Benz Friendz

Worst: Covered in Money

Future- Honest
8.2/10