SAVE ME EP - Future: Review
Future
is the now iconic Atlanta rapper who helped put mumble rap on the map and has become one of the breakout successes of the trap era with popular albums and mixtapes like DS2, EVOL and Monster. Future dropped two collaborative projects in 2018, the Future and Zaytoven album Beastmode 2 and the Future and Juice WRLD album WRLD On Drugs. While neither of the two we're met with critical praise or great commercial success Future was still a substantial name going into 2019 when he dropped The WZRD just a few months ago that was immediately a much more popular release. He is following this up with a shift in style on the much shorter Save Me EP.
Review By Lavender:
I definitely caught some hate for the review I gave to Future earlier this year and while I understand it, I stand by my review. There are a handful of great songs on The WZRD but Future's inability to be consistent has harmed all of his music, especially the few projects I feel could have been really great with some trimmed tracklists, mainly DS2, HNDRXX and EVOL. Hearing Future say that this project was a change of pace for him and its very short runtime both grabbed my attention before this album was released, and while the "new" sound is just a return to a sound he's played with before, the shortened tracklist makes this EP a much more tolerable listen than many of Future's recent projects and is one I came away from almost positively.
Most of these seven tracks are solid but lets get the two duds out of the way first. Xanax Damage serves as the intro and is so nondescript that it may as well not even be there. The song is so spacey and moody that it doesn't leave any room for much of anything to actually happen and its short length just further handicaps it, and its unfortunate that it serves as the EP's opener as it is by far the worst song here. Unfortunately the other song I don't care much for it Please Tell Me which has a decently interesting beat and some lyrics that I actually enjoy but Future's performance here is so desperately lifeless that by the end of the song I want nothing more than to never hear it again. The lazy flows and dreadfully slow and repetitive bars are beaten to death and the track is completely unbearable in its full runtime.
While none of the rest of these songs totally blew me away there are plenty of good moments here. Government Official is the EP's lone true banger and while in the grand scheme of things it isn't one of the best Future has ever made the song is refreshing withing the tracklist and a bearable listen. Love Thy Enemies is a solid closing track that opens with Future singing as naturally as he ever has, but even when the autotune kicks in the song is a by the numbers Future track but one that I still enjoy quite a bit.
The rest of the tracks here I'm mostly positive on and I was surprised that any of the songs here really managed to impress me much less three of them, but here we are. St. Lucia is a pretty sharp tune at its core and even though the rattling high hits are generic the song features a number of interesting changes of pace and the swirling nature of its various passages keeps it really interesting and refreshing throughout. Mix this in with some decent lyrics that make the track somewhat conceptual and you have a solid tune. Shotgun is one of the most interesting tracks that starts out with some awful yelping from Future but transitions into what is probably the best vocal performance here. His auto-tuned crooning is passionate and captivating and while I could see this track being a bit of an acquired taste, and I have been on a little bit of an auto-tune kick recently, I think its a great song. Finally we have Extra which features one of the catchiest refrains I've ever heard from Future and while the song doesn't fully use its runtime to the best it could have what it does feature is a good performance and a few refrains that really work.
Save Me is probably the best project I've heard Future drop since HNDRXX and while that may sound like a resounding endorcement the EP really has nothing even decent to go up against. With such a short tracklist it suffers a lot from two complete duds in its tracklist and almost all of these songs have at least one element I would consider a flaw. A shorter and more focused piece is a step in the right direction for Future but this isn't the highest potential I think a Future EP could have. 5.5/10
Best Track: St, Lucia
