Unless you’ve successfully avoided all social media, music, and news platforms in the past 36 hours, you’ve discovered that Drake and Future, two very different rappers with very cool stage names, released an album together, titled “What a Time To Be Alive.”

Both artists dropped heavy hints on Instagram, and the Internet pretty much exploded when the album was dropped on OVO Sound Radio on Beats 1. The album was strategically only released on iTunes and Apple Music, and despite the fact that listeners tend to find loopholes to not pay for music, various music sites have estimated that Drake and Future will still sell hundreds of thousands of copies.

Everything from the album artwork (a close-up of gleaming diamonds) to the album name is bold. Separately, the two artists are very stylistically different, but come together nicely. Their most notable collaboration to date has been featuring on the single “Love Me,” by Lil Wayne, and the two also collaborated on Future’s recent album “DS2.”

Drake maintains his signature rapping style, and songs like “Change Locations” bring classic Drake vocals followed by steady staccato rapping, but it seems like he’s being featured on Future’s body of work, and that’s fine.

Perhaps this is Drake’s way of further cosigning a fellow artist on an extreme level, by releasing a joint album that really heavily showcases the other rapper. By keeping Drake’s name as the first name on the album, the two draw in a wider range of listeners, considering Drake’s commercial popularity.

But once listeners are drawn in, they are eased in, with familiar Drake’s help, to the welcome world of Future. The beats throughout the album seem to hail from Future’s domain, and Drake is a welcome visitor, but not necessarily the main attraction.

Drake is credited, under his real name, Aubrey Graham, as first writer on every track. This is likely a shout out to those in the rap game (i.e. Meek Mill) who questioned whether or not he writes his own lyrics.

That being said, Future holds the most weight on the album, and hopefully he will garner more attention from mass audiences following its release. Thanks to Drake, it really is quite a time to be Future.

Favorite songs: “Diamonds Dancing,” “Change Locations” and “30 for 30 Freestyle”

Isha Damle is a junior television, radio, film major. She rarely knows the actual lyrics to songs, but is good at faking it until she makes it. Plus, her version is probably better. She can be reached at  idamle@syr.edu or on Twitter @ishadamle.

Published on September 21, 2015 at 9:57 pm