Future resists major-label bloat on his brisk Honest

In rap, nothing is proprietary. Be it a unique production choice or a novel flow or inflection, every stylistic innovation is piped directly into the genre’s public domain, where it’s swiftly copied, co-opted, and exhausted. Future understands this better than most. In a few short years, his signature delivery, a melancholy garble that imparts emotional gravity to even the most unassuming sentiments, has been claimed by countless successors, particularly in his native Atlanta, where seemingly half the city now raps in his unmistakable emotive croon. Rather than cede his terrain, though, on his cocksure sophomore album, Honest, Future reasserts ownership of the sound he popularized, handily outshining his many imitators. In a ketchup aisle that grows ever more crowded by the day, he’s the clear Heinz.