The first solo Future mixtape in eight years, the gritty, immediate Mixtape Pluto, lurches in like a relapse, resurfacing the familiar demons that haunted his moody, nocturnal, tortured projects like Monster and 56 Nights a decade ago. It’s a quick splash of reality in the middle of a blockbuster 12 months of comparatively lusher and more cinematic successes. His Metro Boomin collaborations, March’s We Don’t Trust You and April’s We Still Don’t Trust You, both hit Number One, providing fans with nearly two and half houses of luxurious, cinematic, state-of-the-art trap-pop. By all rights he could be continuing to floss with the Weekend and Kendrick Lamar, doing love raps over Isley Brothers samples and releasing incredibly hard trap boasts with Travis Scott and Playboy Carti. Instead, Mixtape Pluto is subterranean and nocturnal, hedonistic one minute and aching with regrets the next, debauched but wounded. Or, as he raps on “South of France,” “Gotta talk about my dark days so you can see my light.”
The breezy, two-minute songs on Mixtape Pluto are a sharp contrast not only from the narcotic, hypnotic vibe-outs of his studio albums, but even the classic mixtapes this hearkens to. Playing like sketches, but by no means undercooked, Future experiments with flows and voices, gets incredibly wordy at times and leaves no space for guest verses. Produced by a fleet of familiar producers — mostly Monster veteran Southside and “Pushin’ P” beatmaker Wheezy —tracks come equipped that that faint patina of SoundCloud distortion and caverns of dark atmospherics. “Go platinum,” he says over a blown-out Southside and Smatt beat. “Fuck a budget.”
The Dirtbag Future, made famous on songs like 2016’s “Low Life,” saunters into the room to stories of shoppings sprees, depressants and promiscuity but — crucially — never sounds truly content. He cops a fleet of luxury cars across the album — Bugatti, Ferrari, Rolls Royce Spectre, Mercedes Benz G-Wagon — but points out that he drives them recklessly and too fast and on the wrong side of the road. The album’s breakout track “Too Fast” is a classic hip-hop tale of succumbing to temptations of success, but is told in that indelible Future way. His money is being spent and spent and spent on taking a girl to Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and Design District in West Hollywood, namechecking Hermés, Chanel, Bvlgari, Pucci, Patek and Richard Millie along the way — the twist is that he may not even like her. “Had a talk with all the friends, told me top splurgin’/Maybe you need to settle down, buy it for someone worth it/It’s the one that woke up with me, she get new purses.”
On Mixtape Pluto, Future pokes at his familiar wounds, showcasing the spoils of decadent life but juxtaposing it with the consequences. The album’s skeeziest lines — “I told my bitch, If I gotta be faithful, I might fall off” — are never too far from songs like “Lost My Dog,” a tale of losing a friend to Fentanyl where he raps “Drugs in my body, I still cry for you.” Thirteen years and 10 Number One albums since breaking out with “Tony Montana,” Future is still a master of showing that Scarface came with both intoxicating highs and gruesome lows.
