The MC who never fails to turn the party out finally lets us in. To take Future at his word on the nine albums and 20-something mixtapes that preceded The Real Me, you’d have to believe him a drug-addicted, endlessly money-hungry nihilist; a perennially heartbroken womaniser whose single redemptive quality is his mastery of rhythm and the English language. To be clear, his 10th studio album does little to disprove any of that, but it does remind us how fortunate we are to bear witness to one of the most inventive MCs in the history of rap. To actually know Future is to love his endlessly inventive non sequiturs, and The Real Me is rife with them. Very few songs are about any one thing; most verses play out like we’re hearing him get lost in his thoughts in real time. Random observations become testaments to his immortality (“Cartel pulling up on me/I’m not the average Joe,” he opines on “F**k a Interview”). Entire choruses are built from throwaway quips (“California girls/They always in the store,” goes “California Girls”). Random celebrities catch strays (“Im having way more bitches and hoes than Nick Cannon/And I get way more littier and I get way more fresh,” he raps on “Snow in Skyami”). Future’s rapping across The Real Me is both paced and relentless, something like a franchise horror-movie villain mid-chase. He can rap (and occasionally sing) about a single topic—his love for exotic women on “Konnichiwa” or his dream partner on “Build a Bitch”—but he sounds no less comfortable when pushing the boundaries of his sound like when he trots out an eyebrow-raising squeaky voice on “2018”, performs a freaked-out lullaby intonation on “Cast a Spell” or apes what we have to believe is a New Wave band’s frontperson on “Hollywood”. In short, The Real him is the same MC who’s commanded our attention every time he’s picked up a microphone. And for real Future fans, that’s always been enough.