Two of the most influential rappers Drake and Future teamed up in collaboration for surprise mixtape, “What A Time to Be Alive.”

Both artists recently dropped top albums, Drake’s “If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late” and Future’s “DS2,” both acclaimed No.1 albums this year.

Drake has made an appearance on every one of Future’s albums, so I’m not sure why they decided to make an entire album together. Listening to the new album, their collaboration seemed lackluster.

With Future taking the lead in this mixtape, Drake’s parts seem to be short and softer.  In songs like “Digital Dash” Future takes the lead leaving Drake with only a mere verse or two. This mixtape was over hyped. The only good parts being the songs where Drake seemed to be more involved.

The collaboration fell short, and doesn’t even seem like a shared album, but rather a solo artist album with a couple features from Drake. Since Future takes up over double the amount of airtime, Drake’s absence is very noticeable.

“What A Time to Be Alive” seemed lazy, and rather sloppily put together,  leaving this album as an overall disappointment and an unusual one due to the success of both artists. However, the mixtape does has its high points with songs such as “Change Directions,” “Jumpman” and “Plastic Bag.” These songs had higher energy and saved the album giving me motivation to keep listening, hoping, others would stand out as much as these did. Unfortunately those 3 songs didn’t save the entire 11 song album, and left me wondering, is this really the best album these two artists could conjure up together? I hope not.