Drake and Future are having incredible success this year, and they’ve just released a joint album that’s going to be talked about until 2015 is over.
Drake and Future’s What a Time To Be Alive comes after weeks of rumors and speculations that the pair were working together on a project. Some of us thought that Drizzy, Future Hendrix, and all their affiliates were trolling fans. Others believed the hype. Just by looking at their previous track record this year, it would make sense for them to collaborate on music. With all the anticipation finally behind us, the album is here.
Every Drake and Future fan is currently dissecting What a Time To Be Alive, as OVO Sound Radio ran back the album twice for listeners who might of missed it. At 11 tracks, the LP is executive produced by Metro Boomin and mixed by Gadget & Noah "40" Shebib. While all of this sounds great on paper, it's important to note what label this project is released on. According to iTunes, the album is released under Cash Money Records with Epic Records, which was hinted on Saturday (Sept. 19) when Epic's official Twitter account retweeted Future's "WHAT A TIME TO B ALIVE" tweet.
For Drake, he’s already dropped If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late—a surprise release in February on iTunes under Cash Money / OVO Sound / Republic Records. The same went for the physical copies that were announced later in April. Despite debate over whether it was an album or mixtape, this counts as Drake’s fourth studio album under his contract with YMCMB.
For Future, he recently released Dirty Sprite 2 in July, which was the first album to have the highest sales week in his career with 126,000 copies sold. Since signing to Epic in December 2012, he’s released three albums (Pluto, Honest and DS2). Unlike Drake, who has voiced his displeasure about Cash Money on IYRTITL and fueled more talks about him getting out of his contract when he didn't thank Birdman and them in the liner notes, Future is seemingly happy with Epic Records. However, the label might not be happy with him, as rumors circulated that they didn’t like the idea of a free mixtape while they’re still in mid-cycle of DS2.
Just for reference, Jay Z and Kanye West’s Watch the Throne, released in 2011, was through Roc-A Fella, Roc Nation and Def Jam. Big Boi and Phantogram’s upcoming EP Big Grams, due out Sept. 25, is via Epic Records and Republic Records. Whatever What a Time To Be Alive will count towards for Drake and Future, just know that these two just brought us that “champion sound” and we can’t wait to see what will come of it.
