Mixing the enterprise of attraction and the pleasure of friendship is what unites rapper Future with film producer Metro Boomin. With “We Don’t Belief You” marking the official full-album debut from key collaborators, the two have produced a piece of cold, melancholic, deep-beat hip-hop that rocks and infuriates. But while its strengths are here and clear, it’s not always a simple marriage; there is a trade-off between who has the advantage on each monitor.
Released on Friday as the potential first half of a two-album collaboration (the follow-up album is scheduled for release on April 12), “We Don’t Belief You” arrives 11 years after their much briefer preliminary collaboration (“Karate Chop” from 2013). monitor) and nine years after Metro Boomin produced Future’s bittersweet “DS2” album (2015 also marked Metro’s executive production of Future and Drake’s “What a Time to Be Alive” mixtape).
What’s interesting about the dynamic is that between the producer’s 2022 solo album “Heroes & Villains” (co-starring Future on “Too Many Nights” and “Superhero”) and his 2023 soundtrack for “Man- Spider-Verse,” Metro Boomin’s stock increased exponentially. Its dark, vividly cinematic aesthetic, with its gothic melodicism and jangly rhythms, has made hip-hop commerce normal.
In the same period of 2022-2023, Future released “I Never Favored You”, an album that sounded…. identical to Future: solidly lascivious, frankly fluid, almost strangely braggadocio, and sometimes lyrically lazy. This has been Future’s approach since 2014’s “Reliable.” Just like McDonald’s Huge Mac, every Future album is as good and similar in flavor and texture as the last.
That said, “We Don’t Believe You” doesn’t feel like a competition. Starting with the title track, with its upbeat synth line and its understated “Smiling Faces Typically” pattern Undisputed Reality, a surprisingly uneven Future takes over dramatically with regards to brotherly countenance and the questions of who is fake and what is real. with real weight. “Younger Metro,” co-produced by Mike Dean and featuring the Weeknd’s dreamy neo-falsetto in its bridge, finds Future doing his usual Auto-Tune, playing gratuitously with a narrative of never being sober. The glacially atmospheric track, while solid, never gains momentum until its “drowning/trying” bridge and slow, faded ending.
The cracked sequencer and quiet rhythm of “Ice Assault” give Future the opportunity to speak to the worthy merits of Metro Boomin and the style in which his dark soundscapes carry this song.
But you start to wonder, as “Ice Assault” segues into the cool “Kind Shit,” if Metro isn’t slowing down its own game too much, but maybe sideways, to accommodate Future’s controlledly angry rhymes and crazy, corny moves. The religious mood, gently arpeggiating synths, and subtly jangly vibe of “Kind Shit” sound like the track was made to soar gloriously—and would likely feature an epic, incendiary lift if this were a Metro Boomin album alone. But Future, Playboi Carti, and Travis Scott put out Metro’s fireplace, and a monitor that would be great is just fine.
This similar factor occurs to the producer in several different events. The Freddie Kruger-meets-Jaws-of-Metro atmosphere and the uncomfortable piano line on “Magic Don Juan (Princess Diana)” only gain momentum when Future’s movement finally reaches the event of the track’s plucked strings and swollen, faux-horn outro. French. The heavenly lullaby of “Cinderella,” with Travis Scott on the chorus, dissipates into the ether.
An ethereal piano-driven “Claustrofóbica,” like several tracks on this album, addresses the theme of Future and Metro being “professionals” who are unique in their craft, while (surprise) most of the other rappers lack experience. But “buying another mansion” and needing another stove because you’re cooking too much cocaine doesn’t really communicate the problem of claustrophobia. The future Hendrix simply seems to want feng shui lessons.
Metro Boomin’s choppy orchestral wobble finally finds appropriately theatrical movement when Kendrick Lamar leaps into the verses of “Like That” with his raucous rapping, deep breaths, and much-needed frenetic strength… not to mention the cutting, sarcastic lyrics mocking Drake and J- Cole that generated fan intrigue and informative headlines instantly after the album’s release.
Young Thug doesn’t have Lamar’s vigor, wrath, or salt, but instead brings a grave menace to the choruses of Metro’s whistling horror track, “Slimed In.” While Future’s “charge a chicken just for a verse” lyric brings some surprising laughs, the dark mood of “On Regular Hustle” only finds vivacity in Rick Ross’s jovial approach to the prison enterprise.
For the most part, Metro gains more from the duo’s first volume than Future does. Then again, there are incredibly emotional and richly melodic tracks like “Operating Outta Time” (co-produced with Zaytoven and Chris XZ), where the rapper sounds clear as a bell, passionate and hungry, backed by a simple piano and hammered. and a slow, creaky organ. “Onde My Twin@” too, with its twinkling percussion, smooth synth, and rollicking melody, offers a quietly frenzied Future something eager to chew on: a crazy, dangerous story involving a courtroom, a pistol, and some mushrooms. Now, what’a film that many of us want to see.
So there is hope that the potential majesty of Metro Boomin and Future’s patented EVOL model will rise up and meet at the center. And possibly, simply possibly, that’s what will happen with April’s second chapter.