XXL celebrates 50 years of hip-hop with this moment:
Jan. 15, 2015: From late 2014 to early 2015, Future was in a Michael Jordan zone. In a six-month period, the Atlanta rapper dropped three mixtapes that had the internet going nuts. They were Monster, 56 Nights and the Zaytoven-assisted Beast Mode mixtape, which was released on Jan. 15, 2015.
Beast Mode is the shortest of those three tapes, clocking in at only eight songs. Fellow rappers Juvenile and Young Scooter make guest spots on the project, but the standout tracks are “Lay Up,” “Real Sisters,” “Forever Eva” and “Just Like Bruddas,” where the Freebandz boss addresses the breakup with his ex, Ciara.
Future‘s resurgent three-peat was also highlighted by the hilarious memes that took over the internet, applauding his banner stretch.
Back in 2016, Future and Zay announced that they had completed a follow-up project, Beast Mode ’16, which was originally expected to drop at some point that year. “If it came to it [and] I needed to drop right now, we done,” Zay told DJ Vlad in an interview n September of 2016. “I’m confident in what we got right now to drop another Zaytoven and Future project. We’re really done, but we keep working though. Future’s the guy where if I send him some beats while he on the road and there’s a pack of beats that he really like—if there’s a new vibe or new wave—he like man, keep feeding me more. Feed me more of this every day.”
The highly anticipated sequel, eventually titled BeastMode 2, finally saw the light of day in July of 2018, taking the game by surprise despite the fact that Zaytoven hinted the project would likely arrive earlier.
;background-image:url("/images/blurry.png"))
