Future – “Kno the Meaning” (Singles Going Steady)

The loss of a harddrive is one of those things that can’t resolve to ever sound like anything but a first world problem, but to those of us who live inside of a machine it is hella traumatic. Like when Scarlett Johansson briefly goes offline in Her, you fear that a piece of you may have just disappeared into the digital ether. So, I’ll defend Future from the inevitable jabs he’s going to get over the melancholy mood he reserves for some data storage. That said, Future’s patented flat affect and minimalist depressive hedonism has managed to stir me a total of about three times in his career and MikeWillMadeIt is responsible for all of those tracks. I honestly can’t distinguish the rest of this song from the last couple songs he’s released. I always hope to be surprised, but this is just the American hip-hop version of the mopey miserablism that defined the indie ’90s. — TIMOTHY GABRIELE (2/10)