its quite peculiar how you are so opposed calling anything he does R&B (so i would wager you DO think it slanderous) but anyway, its pretty obvious, futures whole shtick is blurring hip hop and R&B (not like hes the only one of course). i be you (this could be edm-gone-R&B), special, blood sweat tears (this is actually the song that most reminds me of wyclef in that affectedly impassioned, ragged, almost-reggae delivery), side effects, ill be yours, the title song, how you can say these arent R&B or at least HEAVILY R&B laced is a bit odd. it doesnt matter whether you are placing them as false binaries to what drake does, future is no less grating than drake in his icky juxtapositions of obnoxiousness and confessional intimacy. but hes just as indebted to R&B. as far as it being futuristic or whatever (which id say is stretching things a tad but hey, loveee song sounded more futuristic than 90% of honest), young thug is sounding quite a bit more futuristic than honest right now...
I don't think R&B is slanderous as a comparative point, I think it's misleading, and it distracts from the innovative ancestry of Future. Let me try and explain this in a certain way...
When I say "Futuristic", this isn't a self-applied descriptor, it's something out of something Atlanta Rappers came up. It was this little niche of post-snap pre-"TRAP" rap called "Swag Rap". It was usually characterized by younger teen rappers or adults with higher voices (OJ The Juiceman, or J-Money AKA J-Futuristic who would brag about his 'futuristic' flow/style, hence the label)
I know this stuff wasn't a big deal on dissensus probably, but this was a mini-event in Atlanta of an entire generational push as now a lot of these acts who are present today, Thug, Future, Travis Porter, Rich Kidz are either second or third-wave 'futuristic' rappers who built a catalog. Thug is of course more futuristic to you identify with in the typical sonically challenging method, but Future is Thug's progenitor just as much as Wayne (quite literally too. When I first heard Future's early work when it was popping out, I kept thinking how much more solidly 'rapper'/'trapper' based it was compared to contemporaries.
Some examples:
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And a lot of these artists have R&B influences, sure. But they're not necessarily operating in the R&B formula. Rather what happened with a lot of these artists was a progression into a a post rap-pop, which is what happened with Future and a bunch of his peers. Part of this was also influenced by a large group of typically Haitian Atlanta citizens who use autotune, melody and songwriting to characterize their work. The comparisons you usually describe are either A) Outsiders to rap flirting with it to expand their sound or B) rappers who holistically abandon rap aside from maybe still relying on the production style affiliated with rap (though if memory serves right, by his second album, Wyclef's production was a lot of live-band 'real music' slop.). David Drake actually alluded to a lot of this in his Pitchfork review of Thug's ICFN3 tape, though that was before more of this wave finally broke out of Atlanta and on a national scale in a way that wasn't nearly as reductive and looked at them as novelty. He proposed that dancehall might be a rather subliminal influence on a lot of this stuff in the 'Haitianwave', and I definitely concur.
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I've already thrown a huge monkey wrench in the R&B thread, but I think it's entirely necessary that this gets recognized as it's own field, rather than simply being cheaply swept under "R&B".