Future Talks Misinterpretations, Social Media, & Staying True to Himself
Future graces one of six covers for the Fall/Winter 2017 issue of Highsnobiety, which features the rapper’s dapper profile next to a chandelier.
As part of a lengthy Q&A, Hendrix talks about staying true to himself, being misinterpreted, and why he only does interviews on his terms. After pre-screening the questions, Pluto opens up about his plans and goals.
“Right now I want to make music I never thought I could make,” he said. “I’m trying to perform in ways I never thought I could perform. I’m trying to go places I never thought I would go. This is the first time I’m experiencing certain things so I don’t even have time to pay attention to everything. Music has been my driving force since day one. There are certain things that I’m still trying to achieve in music, maybe when I do that I’ll be able to focus on something else. Right now, my music has been the driving force to get me where I wanted to get to in life.”
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While he’s still figuring out his end game, Future is carrying on with his FreeWishes Foundation, his partnership with Reebok, and his well-guarded social media presence. Read additional quotes from the cover story below.
On Staying True To Himself: “I’m always making music. I feel like that’s the key. Music will change in just three months, so if I go to Europe for a whole three months and come back, the music scene will be completely different. I just try to stay in tune with what’s going on: I keep my eyes open for the new artists, listen to new melodies on the radio; pay attention to the tempos playing in the clubs. … Being yourself [musically] is the most important thing because if you think your shit ain’t working and stop trying and then somebody else tries it and it starts working for them, you’re going to be mad. Some people try to be everybody, so that’s why they burn out. There’s longevity in being yourself and not trying to be 10 other people.”
On Being Misinterpreted: “Yeah, but that’s supposed to happen because I’m smarter than people think. At the end of the day they’re not going to know I’m smarter than them until 10 years, 20 years from now when they’re still listening to me like ‘I’m just now getting what he said.’ Longevity, that’s what makes music classic. It’s not a classic when you hear it the first day and get everything you heard right then. It’s a classic when you go back 20 years from now and it can still relate to you. I said things in Pluto five years ago that people are just now talking about. There’s not nothing wrong with that, it just takes time for some people to catch on.”
On Social Media: “If I tweet something that makes you mad, I want you to be mad. I’m conscious enough to know like ‘man, don’t do it,’ but at the end of the day, at certain times, people need to know how I feel. I want you to know I’m real, I’m human. I don’t want it to seem like everything is artificial to me. I don’t want it to seem like I don’t get mad, or this didn’t offend me, or that don’t affect me. I also just want my fans to know what I really think because people print shit all the time that’s not true. They just printed some stuff about my son. He was in a Gap commercial and they said that commercial came from a certain thing. The information was wrong and people was really still printing that on the blogs anyway. I’m looking at it and I’m not mad that it’s wrong because it is what it is. But some of them [blogs] put an ignorant title next to my son’s name though. If it was just about me and I’m going through certain shit, it’s whatever. But you can’t say certain stuff because he [Future’s son] might look at it one day like, ‘What was they talking about?’ I don’t want him to read dumb shit because people are going off the wrong information. I actually got him that Gap campaign because I have a campaign with Gap. We both do—me and my son. I want people to understand that. Let the truth reveal itself before you going off of the first thing you read or see.”
On Doing Interviews On His Own Terms: “Being misunderstood happened a lot early on. I wanted to stop that from happening again. I know there are certain questions that need to be answered, I get that. I just don’t want to be asked about somebody else. That’s like a two-part question and then I end up answering the shit and other person gets mad about it. I had to learn to slow down with everything and just take a day to think about if I wanted to say yes [to an interview]. If you don’t, you might end up involved with something you said yes to because of what was going on at the time. Maybe you really didn’t have your mind right. Maybe you just wanted to respond because they told you to respond and then you respond wrong. I just take my time now, because I have so much going on throughout the day and I don’t want to respond to the wrong shit.”