Future (Rapper)

Future has had a colourful personal life. He has four children with four different women: Jessica Smith, Brittni Mealy, India J, and Ciara.

In October 2013, Future was engaged to Ciara. However, she called off the engagement in August 2014 due to his infidelity. Their son, Future Zahir Wilburn, was born on May 2014.

Currently, Future has legal proceedings against him by both Jessica Smith and Ciara. While Smith has sued him for failing to pay child support, Ciara has sued him for defamation, slander and libel.

Future was born as Nayvadius DeMun Wilburn on November 20, 1983 in Atlanta, Georgia in a family of street hustlers. He attended Columbia High School.

As a child, Nayvadius DeMun Wilburn was one of the members of the musical collective ‘The Dungeon Family’. It was there that he was nicknamed Future, a name that stayed with him for the rest of his life. It was his cousin, Rico Wade who encouraged him to hone his writing skills and make a career out of rapping.

From early 2010 to 2011, Future released a series of mixtapes titled ‘1000’, ‘Dirty Sprite’ ad ‘True Story’. In September 2011, he signed a major record deal with Epic Records fellow American rapper Rocko's A1 Recordings.

After inking the deal with A1 Recordings, Future came up with his next mixtape ‘Streetz Calling’. Through the mixtape, he brought a new dimension to pop genre and nearly perfected it. Simultaneously, he also partnered with rapper Gucci Mane for their collective album ‘Free Bricks’. He even co-wrote the YC single ‘Racks’.

Though ‘Streetz Calling’ was deemed as the final mixtape before the release of Future’s debut album, in January 2012, he came up with yet another mixtape titled ‘Astronaut Status’. Though ‘Astronaut Status’ did not perform exceptionally well as his previous works, it nevertheless took Future’s rhythm and music well into the next year.

Future’s debut album ‘Pluto’ was released in April 2012. It included remixes of ‘Tony Montana’ featuring Drake and ‘Magic’ featuring T.I. ‘Magic’ went on to become Future’s first single to enter the Billboard Hot 100 chart. ‘Pluto’ had inputs from Trae Tha Truth, R. Kelly and Snoop Dogg. Later in 2012, Future wrote, produced and was featured on ‘Loveeeeeee Song’ taken from Barbadian singer Rihanna's seventh studio album ‘Unapologetic’.

On January 15, 2013, Future released the compilation mixtape ‘F.B.G.: The Movie’ which featured artists signed to his Freebandz label including Young Scooter, Slice9, Casino, Mexico Rann and Maceo. The mixtape was a huge hit (having over 250, 000 downloads on mixtape site DatPiff) and it was certified platinum.

Though Future’s career started way back in 2010, his first major breakthrough came in, in 2015 when he came up with his album ‘DS2’ and a collaborative mixtape with Canadian rapper Drake titled ‘What a Time to Be Alive’. Both the albums were major hits and performed exceptionally well. The albums debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, Billboard R&B Charts and Billboard Hot Rap Songs thereby making Future the first rapper to have two number one albums in a year.

In 2017, Future surprised his fans by giving them two albums back to back within a week of each other’s release, the first was his self-titled fifth album ‘Future’ and the second being his sixth album titled ‘HNDRXX’. Both the albums peaked at number one on the Billboard 200 and Canadian Albums Chart thereby making Future the first artists ever to have two albums debut at the top position.