With the dual Prince and royalty allusion as his new mixtape’s title and with a healthy dose of arrogance backing up its surprise release, Future is making some serious claims towards membership of the hip-hop elite. The thing is, based on his previous two releases, he can probably back it up. Solo effort DS2 and What a Time to Be Alive, his collaboration with Drake, were both huge hits, catapulting him toward stardom at an astonishing pace.

But that newfound spotlight is not a kind place to many artists – many have looked back on WaTtBA as a service provided for Drake’s benefit. Future has only really had one significant solo success, and he has yet to provide the consistent output to justify the dizzying hype being piled upon him. So his status is ripe for being challenged: is Future really in command?

Purple Reign bares the hallmarks of an artist who has arrived. Future’s identifying style has barely changed, having found a groove alongside his regular producers. He has completely settled in to his role, which is to define, represent and relentlessly sell trap music. It is a totally respectable position to have reached.

The problem is that it’s insufferably boring. He has pumped out a set of smooth, predictable tracks with little about them to differentiate them from the rest of Future’s output or, indeed, each other. Now that he has shown off his defining sound so completely, now that his messy breakup (with RnB singer Ciara) has been resolved, now that the boundaries that trap was fighting in its inception have been well and truly eradicated; what remains on this release is a complete lack of struggle or tension in the delivery of these tracks.

And it is a shame that Purple Reign ended up that way, given the components for a much more engaging project are there. Led by Metro Boomin, the producers turned in a very respectable and, occasionally, inventive set of beats: ‘Run Up’ channels the best of UK grime with its angular, awkward shuffle, while ‘Inside the Mattress’ and ‘All Right’ are thunderous slices of hard hitting body music. Occasionally, those more exciting beats tease out a more dynamic flow from Future, but the majority of these tracks are ponderous and dull.

The failure of this album is set in relief when you have a look at the artists Future is up against, making vicious, danceable hip-hop music that also manages to retain a sense of invention. A$AP Rocky’s last album, At.Long.Last.A$AP, adds a delirious and cinematic quality to its low-slung, Southern sound with a mad lyrical sensibility to cap it off; its sales even matched Future’s own smash DS2.

Long Beach-native Vince Staples certainly won’t manage to beat Future commercially, but his breakout album, Summertime ’06, marries deathly, stark beats to a pointed political statement, all the while wrapping it up in an intelligently structured narrative.I’m so down on this Future release only because we have come to expect so much more from him: he proved on DS2 that he can be one of the most interesting artists around. Maybe that was more a product of his circumstance than anything innate to the music; more happy accident than concerted effort.

Future has already stated that this is only the start of his release schedule for this year – last year produced three mixtapes and an album. Hopefully, somewhere in those releases is a new idea for what Future’s project is really about. That idea has been lost somewhere along the way, and Purple Reign really shows it.