These guys sound good together, even if they don’t exactly have Mobb Deep levels of chemistry. By the numbers, What a Time to Be Alive is more of a Future project featuring Drake than vice versa, but every verse and hook still flows into the next. Drake’s clarity brings Future’s darkness into focus, while Future cosigns Drake’s stabs at ATL rap traditions. It also happens that, after collaborations like “Tony Montana”, “Never Satisfied”, and “Where Ya At”, Drake and Future are a complementary pair. So, as temporary rap duos go, this is roughly as exciting as Jay Z and Kanye West on Watch the Throne - plus, What a Time to Be Alive, recorded in Atlanta in six days, is thoroughly now, whereas Jay and Yeezy’s album pulled from everything from ’60s soul to dubstep. He now causes cash to precipitate all over Europe, probably to the soundtrack of his own recent, charting singles (“Fuck Up Some Commas”, “Blow a Bag”, and the Drake-featuring “Where Ya At”). He followed up that trio with July’s hugely popular DS2album, officially transcending the street-level fame of Atlanta peers like Young Scooter and Peewee Longway. Future is Atlanta’s most fascinating rap star since Gucci Mane, largely due to his run as a mixtape messiah on the recent Monster, Beast Mode, and 56 Nights, which collectively marked the start of a new era for the now 31-year-old. There’s no definitive proof that Drizzy has even reached the apex of his career, but he makes sure everyone knows he hasn’t fallen off an inch, making rap his own grand spectacle in the process.įuture is on Drake’s side, but to be fair, Drizzy is reaping rewards from this partnership, too. His years at the top of the rap world have made him fearless, a temperament that comes through in blunt flows and hard beats. Both “Charged Up” and “Back to Back” were diss songs colder than Meek’s “Wanna Know”, and Drake’s consensus win in the feud confirmed what the muscular songs of If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late suggested. As Meek Mill learned this summer after firing ghostwriting allegations Drake’s way, the view of Drizzy as a “softy” is (at least partly) an illusion. So yes - hugely inconsistent but fans of good UK comedy will certainly find something diverting in all the awkward glossy mess it's just sadly burdened by the weight of the talent involved.You want to be on Drake’s side. The second series, hugely belated due to circumstances beyond anyone's control, feels like an odd throwback sitcom and has such a whiplash-inducing forced cliffhanger that it almost feels they came up with it on the day of shooting. The set-pieces can be great but it doesn't really cling together outside of them. No one in it beyond McGivern is particularly likable and it often runs out of steam very quickly. Otherwise - it's a bit of a drab muddle, the plot lurching one way then the other and taking huge tonal leaps into maudlin drama as scheming step-brother Webb cuckoos his way into into David Mitchell's life. The witty dialogue is the biggest draw here really and the MVP of the ensemble (as in the far more consistent Semi-Detached) is far-and-away UK comedy legend Geoff McGivern who barks gloriously throughout. With the stars of Peep Show and one of the writers of Peep Show (and the Thick of It) the word Peep Show is never far from your mind here but it's a very different beast - a sort of malevolent dramatic sitcom but with cosy drone shots of rural Gloucestershire and endlessly intrusive quirky incidental music like a Waitrose ad that's taken a bad turn.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |