On This Day 7 Years Ago, Future Released One of His Darkest, Most Underrated Projects To Date
· Vice
People who listen intently to Future know that there is quite a darkness to his music. Sure, there’s quite a bit of indulgence in women and luxury, lots of talk about the trap. But it’s not quite surface-level. The street life came with trauma; the copious amounts of women and drugs filled a void in his heart. The pain in Future’s music is evident if you dig deeper into his work.
All of this becomes evident in highly lauded works like “Codeine Crazy” or one of his opuses in HNDRXX in 2017. But a project that constantly goes under the radar is SAVE ME in 2019, which turned seven years old today.
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Records like “XanaX Damage” show Future drowning under the weight of grief and drugs. His vocals are frail and despondent, feeling like a vampire that can only cope and love another woman when he’s high. When it’s nighttime, it’s the only time he feels relatively normal. By the time he reaches the chorus, he wails in agony that “I only call you when I’m faded/Your arms around me, come and save me.”
Similarly, “Love Thy Enemies” shows Future isolated and disillusioned from romance. After a while, he feels treated like “property” rather than someone who could be fully loved. On “St. Lucia”, he’s bluntly asking for someone to save him in the intro before retreating into calloused sex and drugs. Anything to numb those aching feelings of emptiness.
Future Releases the Underrated ‘SAVE ME’ 7 Years Ago Today
Reviews of SAVE ME were a pretty mixed bag at the time. Ultimately, it seemed as if they were comparing the EP to his apex work. In that light, it’s difficult to compare it to records like Monster or DS2. Consequence argued, “There’s no denying Future’s ability to constantly curate content, but perhaps with a little more time and focus, SAVE ME could have been significantly better.”
Meanwhile, Rolling Stone marveled at the bluesy, more experimental edge that permeates SAVE ME. “A fascinating ‘what if’ scenario, a more experimental Future working within modern rap techniques and pushing their boundaries to the blurry edges,” writer Christopher Weingarten wrote.
Pitchfork felt like the Atlanta legend “hit a wall” that only showed small moments of the great artist he is. “While it proves that he’s still a master of melancholic detail, dissecting his self-inflicted misery with little jewels of profundity, there’s nothing new or groundbreaking here,” writer Reed Jackson shared.
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