WE DON'T TRUST YOU & WE STILL DON'T TRUST YOU - Future & Metro Boomin: Review
Review by Lav:
WE DON'T TRUST YOU is a victory lap a decade in the making. It's hard to think of a rapper and producer who have inspired the contemporary trap style that's dominated hip-hop for years more than Future and Metro Boomin. Both while working together and separately. the pair have defined a generation of artists and are among the most influential to the next. That's why it's surprising to say that I can't even say I'm a particularly huge fan of either artist. I certainly have plenty of moments I enjoy from both of them, but they're not the kind of superstars I could ever expect myself to LOVE. After a year-long series of teases towards this record, I was mostly expecting a lot of frosting with not much cake underneath. That's why I'm so happy to report that across the hour of material here, both Future and Metro are about as close to their A-game as I've ever heard.
The record comes out swinging right out of the gate with one banger after another. The opener and title track feels dramatic enough to serve as the catalyst for the entire record. It's followed by a murmuring banger in the Weeknd-featuring Young Metro and a personal favorite from the record in Ice Attack which features a Travis Scott-level beat switch. Speaking of Travis Scott, he pops up on the next track Type Shit which could probably use a better hook but features a great beat and a number of strong performances. He pops up later on the record on another highlight Cinderella.
Speaking of features, it's been nearly a month since Kendrick Lamar dropped his beef-sparking verse on Like That. I can't say the song itself is a favorite of mine on the record overall even though Kendrick does obviously crush his inclusion. At the very least the song does subtle things to separate itself from the trap malaise that Future projects tend to get so mired in. That's some praise that I have for the entire record really. The mass of material here can occasionally feel like an exhausting climb, Metro in particular does quite a bit to keep these songs sounding fresh.
The second half of the record isn't quite as dynamic as the first, though I still enjoy it. The one-two punch of Ain't No Love and Everyday Hustle is definitely a highlight. Mostly I just admire the record's ability to avoid the eyeball-glazing segments of indistinguishable trap slop that so many bloated rap records can fall victim to, stay tuned for more on that. But for the most part, I'm pretty impressed by this album and I like it more than I anticipated. Future and Metro truly sound larger-than-life and given what they've accomplished, it all feels earned. Punctuating an entire era with a crossover this solid clicked with more than almost any other project either has ever released. 7/10
Review by Lav:
I wrote my first draft of that WE DON'T TRUST YOU review a few weeks ago and at the time I thought the wouldn't actually release a second album. But I sat on it regardless and as it turns out, Future and Metro Boomin delivered. But in a cruel twist of fate, I wish they hadn't. The second album they dropped is an absolutely brain-numbing 90 minutes of material that is such an obvious clearing of the vault that even describing it as a studio album feels like fraud.
Take the opening track as a shining example. Where as the first album opens with a pretty epic step into the triumphant highs of the pair's influence, WE DON'T TRUST YOU's title track is a completely vapid space only occasionally occupied by Future and The Weeknd seemingly freestyle moaning out random refrains. Another one of the most talked about moments on the record is This Sunday, which features the original chorus from Feel No Ways. But I think in an attempt to shade Drake, Future & Metro may have accidentally revealed just how half-assed this entire album is. Unlike it's predecessor which feels stylistically consistent, it's obvious that very few of these songs were ever actually intended to exist together on a project.
That isn't to say that the entire album is completely worthless. There are surprise highlights like Come To The Party which is both catchy and impressively well-performed. I also can't really explain why i like the 7-minute Red Leather but something about the seamlessly relaxed beat and J. Cole feature breaking up some monotony on the record always made me happy to hear the track. This isn't necessarily to say that Future & Metro are serving up any all-time disasters, though the record is full of duds. The biggest issue with the record is that it fails so badly to justify its own existence. Save for a few highlights this is a glorified B-sides record and isn't even particularly interesting by those standards. Compared to its genuinely impressive predecessor, this is a sequel that absolutely nobody seems to need. 3.5/10
