Whether he was a mastermind pulling levers from behind the scenes or simply a willing chaos agent who held the fuse, Future’s role in the year’s explosive Drake-versus–Kendrick Lamar rumble set in motion one of the biggest fights in hip-hop history. (To very briefly recap, Lamar’s guest verse on “Like That,†off Future and Metro Boomin’s project We Don’t Trust You, took direct aim at the Canadian hitmaker and J. Cole, thus launching a riveting monthslong war of words filled with accusations of ghostwriting, grooming, and infidelity.) Yet as beef enthusiasts poured over each new diss like tea leaves, Future stayed discernibly above the fray, avoiding much of the backlash as he went on an extensive arena tour with Metro and made space for Cole on the sequel release, We Still Don’t Trust You.
Feeding fans on the road seemed more important than fueling fires, which makes Future’s decision to drop his latest project, Mixtape Pluto, such a strategically shrewd move. To his credit, the 40-year-old star has maintained genre dominance while many of his regional and generational peers have faded into the background. But those longing for a return to the astral magic of Astronaut Status, his ninth mixtape, or the post-Honest run of Monster, Beast Mode, and 56 Nights, will find none of that 2010s charm here. Instead, they’re left with a rote, 17-track retread of his last two albums. At this stage, Future seems more content to meet his fans’ base expectations rather than risk letting them down with anything that would unsettle or challenge them.
Since 2011’s True Story, the Pluto moniker has been a gratifyingly unassailable part of Future’s brand. Freebandz devotees will catch echoes of that planetary past throughout Mixtape Pluto. Some of the callbacks are glaringly obvious — the “Mask Off†declaration on the booming “Brazzier,†the Ace Hood “Bugatti†bar on “Teflon Don†— though there are subtler moments too, like the grainy Three 6 Mafia sample on “Told My,†which effectively connects Mixtape Pluto to We Don’t Trust You and Still cuts “Ice Attack†and “Nights Like This.â€
But Future’s approach soon slips from satisfying to slothful. The utterly incoherent “Plutoski†sounds like a rough demo, with a vocal take that seems like it was recorded from the bottom of a double cup. That nagging sense of incompletion returns on “South of France,†which spends its final 30 seconds as a meandering instrumental that ends abruptly. From the slutty storytelling of “Made My Hoe Faint†to the branded brags of “Too Fast,†familiarity casts a purple pallor over the proceedings. Even high points like the coke-rap sermon “Ready to Cook Up†and the exotically lush “Surfing a Tsunami†exist in safe pockets of fan service.
With few surprises and zero features, the project feels distant from the period Future seems intent on conjuring. The revenant nod to music of his late cousin, Organized Noize’s Rico Wade, on the cover, never finds its way into the tape. Instead, the music ultimately mirrors Future’s more recent fare. Recruiting producer Southside for nearly half the album all but ensures Pluto sounds like every effort since 2019’s The Wizrd. Ironically, the biggest change to this otherwise reliable model is the absence of Drake, a fixture on Future’s 2020s solo albums High Off Life and I Never Liked You. Considering how Future’s current success hinged on these collabs, this sort of victory lap feels like a miss in the rapper’s post-Aubrey period, choosing to play things safe without his commercially lucrative chum rather than try a more ambitious option with different producers.
But is that really what people want from Future at this point? Quantifiably, he’s having one of the best years in his entire career without having to engage in drill stunts with Cash Cobain clones or tap in with the underground likes of Conductor Williams or Alchemist. With the exception of “Lost My Dog,†a gutting song about losing someone to depression and fentanyl, Mixtape Pluto covers the same luxe hedonism Future has mined into numbing meaninglessness. After starting the year as an agitator, Future conversely does what’s expected of him here, slouching into his legacy without any evident interest in doing much else. Seeing how well his most recent material was received, he is just following a formula that works.