Album Review: 'What A Time To Be Alive'

When two of the biggest artists in hip-hop come together to create a collaborative mixtape, it would indeed seem that now is ‘the time to be alive.’ Sadly, however, Drake and Future’s new project, “What A Time To Be Alive,” falls a bit short of such greatness.

The album was teased on social media and the internet swarmed to get to the bottom of the mysterious collaboration, in the process creating a hype much larger than around most mixtapes. But what did we get?

The album is “collaborative” only in the sense that both artists provide vocals.

Every song feels more like either Future featuring Drake or vice versa. And these aren’t like the best songs off of their recent efforts, but more of the filler tracks. With this disconnect between Future and Drake comes disconnect between each other’s lyrics. Future seems more keen to remain on his usual druggy subject matter and Drake remains on his grandiose braggadocio like in “If You’re reading This It’s Too Late.” The artists seem to find it so difficult to collaborate that the last two songs are attributed to only either artist. Despite the overall mediocrity, “What ATime To Be Alive” does come through with some bangers like “Jumpman” and “Big Rings.” The production throughout, supplied by Metro Boomin, is excellent and separately, the two rappers can actually pull out some excellent bars and flows. The question this all leaves is, how could this have all worked if the efforts put in remained in either artist’s respective works?In summary, “What A Time To Be Alive” has many excellent parts with tons of potential, but does not use any of them to their full potential.

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