Concert review
If concerts were movies, a Future and Metro Boomin show wouldn’t be a Scorsese film — it would be a Michael Bay or Marvel action flick.
You don’t buy a ticket for the dialogue. You go for the explosions, the pyrotechnics and the larger-than-life clash of heroes and villains.
The blockbuster We Trust You Tour took over Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena on Friday night, showcasing an ascendant hero and a surprise guest appearance, soundtracked by Future and Metro Boomin’s most thrilling hits.
Here’s the trailer: Future’s influential brand of trap music — laced with Auto-Tune and braggadocio, it prioritizes melodies over lyrics — revolutionized rap in the 2010s. Future has guided trap, an Atlanta-born subgenre, to unprecedented mainstream success.
To some, Future and “mumble rap” represented an existential crisis for the genre. He’s always played the supervillain, an amoral character whose powers may be too potent for rap’s own good. Strict parents and rap skeptics also will not like Future, who makes trap anthems rife with drug use, violence and unabashed womanizing set to Metro’s spine-shaking bass.
No judgment if you can’t bring yourself to root for this antihero. But love them or hate them, Future and Metro are rap’s strongest superhero team.
The artist and producer had already cemented their hip-hop legacies before their chart-topping 2024 albums “We Don’t Trust You” and “We Still Don’t Trust You,” which ignited a feud that shook rap to its core.
More on that later, though; first came Metro Boomin’s DJ set, around 9:30 p.m.
Dressed in all white, with flames heating the lower bowl at Climate Pledge and massive video boards showing a pulsating beam piercing the earth, the producer ran through about a dozen of the hits he has produced, mostly winding through collaborations with Atlanta rap’s upper echelon (21 Savage, Migos, Future) and working the crowd into a frenzy. The veteran showman shouted out both the 206 and the 425, thanking folks for spending their money and their time at the show, as “time is priceless.”
Metro’s origin story is inextricably tied to Future’s. The producer was a Morehouse College student when he first worked with the rapper in 2012. In the years that followed, they helped Atlanta stake a claim as the new epicenter of rap. But on this tour, Metro is proving he’s more than the mastermind helping Future orchestrate world domination. He’s a star in his own right.
After a brief break, a circular hole above the stage glowed like an interdimensional portal. A warbling voice spoke of a being from another galaxy as alarms rang out like a spaceship with a breach; rap’s enigmatic alien, Future, had arrived.
Early on, insouciant Future couldn’t match his opener’s hype. But he hit his stride with a flurry of high-octane features, from A$AP Ferg’s “New Level” to Young Thug’s “Relationship.” The crowd (mostly teens/early-20-somethings) turned up accordingly then shrieked with equal zeal for the comparatively tender “WAIT FOR U” and the 2012 Rihanna track “Loveeeeeee Song.”
Future wrapped his solo set with early-career fan favorites like “March Madness.” I’ve listened to the song many dozen times over the years but can’t recite any words beyond “balling like it’s March Madness.” Future’s music isn’t just about what he says, though; it’s about how it sounds and feels. At the peak of its unbridled self-confidence, Future’s music makes you feel like a supernatural phenomenon that can harness the power of a collapsing star.
Sinister horns soon proclaimed the reunion of our antiheroes, now in all black, seemingly poised to lead an army of orcs through Middle-earth. “Superhero (Heroes & Villains),” a trap anthem built for an IMAX theater, erupted from the speakers. Flares sparked, flames flew and the bass rattled my brain.
Seeing the spectacle live, it’s clear these two are stronger together. Metro bounded around with a wrestling championship belt, stoking the crowd to get louder, to jump higher, echoing Future as he floated over thumping beats.
Then, out of thin air, a surprise star cameo: Lil Baby, one of the countless Atlanta rappers inspired by Future. Want to measure Metro and Future’s influence? They conjured Lil Baby, one of hip-hop’s bigger names, to perform one song mid-set then saunter off.
Between Future and Metro’s standout 2016 single with The Weeknd, “Low Life,” and this year’s “Type [Expletive],” the crowd reached a fever pitch. And that was before they heard the song that flipped hip-hop on its head in March.
Future and Metro blew the doors off with “Like That” — the No. 1 Billboard single that lit the fuse on a scathing rap battle between Kendrick Lamar, who is featured on the song, and Drake, Future’s former collaborator — but there was no mention of that heavyweight fight. It felt like watching two mad scientists gleefully unleash upon their planet a devastating force, the destructive power of which they couldn’t have fathomed.
On Friday, Future showed his status in rap’s pantheon is beyond reproach, even without wading into this rift that he helped incite. He’s grappled with his hedonistic legacy over the years too, telling Rolling Stone in 2019 that he was once afraid to tell fans he had quit using the drug lean because it was so central to his persona. Future had a change of heart when he heard that rapper Juice WRLD, who died of an overdose months after that interview, was inspired by his music to try lean as a sixth grader.
Though he’s still playing the old hits, Future seems to be in a better place than the character he used to play. And now he’s wrapping a tour with his “brother Metro,” who repeatedly lauded Future as “the greatest artist on the planet.” Seems like a decent ending to this film for the antihero.
