Future’s Dirty Sprite 2 and Drowning Sorrow in Excess
Dirty Sprite 2 opens with the sound of a single guitar line, drenched in reverb and creeping forward with menacing anticipation. It’s a cinematic moment; as a deep sub bass and spacy pads come in, it feels as if you are slowly being pulled into Future’s harrowing and drug-induced universe. Moments later, the Atlanta rapper delivers perhaps the most iconic opening line in trap album history: “I just fucked your bitch in some Gucci flip flops/I just had some bitches and I made them lip lock.” The lyrics are so absurd they border on comedic, setting the stage for an album that does little more than celebrate the reckless hedonism that often characterizes trap music. But Future’s deadpan, joyless delivery reveals a more complicated relationship between the rapper and his decadent pursuits — a relationship defined not by pleasure, but by emptiness and self-denial. The album is about hedonism, yes, but it is far from a celebration. Instead, Dirty Sprite 2 is a brilliant and encompassing portrait of a man navigating loss, drowning sorrow in the excesses of drugs, women, and fame while coming up empty-handed time and time again.
About a year before the release of Dirty Sprite 2, Future was on top of the world. He was enjoying the commercial success of his sophomore album, Honest, and his recent engagement with singer/songwriter Ciara. In the weeks following the engagement, the couple skyrocketed into instant celebrity; they made appearances on each other’s songs and music videos, publicly tattooed each other’s names, and announced their first baby together on ABC’s daytime talk show “The View.” Their honeymoon, however, was short-lived. Following allegations of Future’s cheating in August of 2014, Ciara called off the engagement and announced the couple’s separation. The breakup was a public and nasty affair, with the two trading blows on Twitter and smearing of each other on podcasts and talk shows. Following additional rumors of Future’s infidelity, Ciara began another high-profile relationship in April of 2015 with football quarterback Russell Wilson. The rapper was left alone, watching from a distance as another man raised his son, and the love of his life moved on in public fashion.
In the following months, Future began recording Dirty Sprite 2. The same vices that Future let destroy his relationship become DS2’s thematic centerpieces. On “Groupies,” Future repeatedly belts “Now I’m back fucking my groupies.” His tone is not braggadocious or prideful, but empty and filled with anger, as if to acknowledge anonymous sex is a fruitless pursuit in the face of his sadness. The song’s production, like much of the album, is dark and belligerent; snare rolls punctuate a haunting lead and blaring 808 line. The album’s production, led by Atlanta-based superproducers Metro Boomin and Southside, fosters an appropriate sonic atmosphere for Future to explore the collapse of his relationship. Much like the grief-stricken rapper, the album’s production drowns bitterness and remorse in the excess of energy-filled drum lines and menacing trap melodies.
Future is an effective lyricist because he is a straightforward one. On the outro of “Slave Master,” Future repeatedly crows “Love live A$AP Yams/I’m on that codeine right now.” It is a stunning admission, given that A$AP Yams died months earlier due to a codeine-induced seizure, but a revelatory one; Future is admitting defeat, submitting to his vices while knowing the full extent of their consequences. Later, on “Percocet and Stripper Joint,” Future glides over a smooth Jake One melody, rapping “I just did a dose of Percocet with some strippers/I just need a whole lot of drugs in my system.” He is able to communicate so much emotion with such little verbiage, eliciting the image of a depraved man high on prescription drugs whose mind is anywhere else but on the strippers he is surrounded by. On “Kno the Meaning,” the album’s penultimate track, Future takes another dig at Ciara: “I ain’t worried about nothing in the world,keep that badass bitch.” He delivers the line with such passivity that it is obvious even he can’t be convinced of its truth.
Despite his knack for lyricism, Future’s most poignant means of expression is and has always been his voice itself. His ability to communicate emotion through intonation and timbre is on full display across DS2. On songs like “Blood on the Money” and “Percocet and Strippers Joint,” Future’s voice melts into the drug-induced production underneath it, reducing to raspy, unintelligible mumbles, another instrument amongst the fray of guitars and synths that compose the album’s production. As Future’s voice cracks and strains, struggling to enunciate syllables, you feel his pain, loneliness, and self-destructive tendencies firsthand. The result is a visceral sonic experience, an album that, when listened to front to back, pulls you into Future’s perverted state of mind without having to hear a word he is saying.