Future plays a narcissist who wants nothing more than to be hypnotized by the hues of his iridescent scumbaggery. This seems less a journey of self-discovery than a drugged state in which loved ones, lurking at the hazy edges of his consciousness, beg him to return from his benzodiazepine space station. It’s the depths of his inner outer-space that make him so fascinating on his own, and also why he’s never made a great album with another rapper. Free Bricks with Gucci Mane is a minor entry in their respective canons; Drake briefly co-opted him for the forgettable What a Time to Be Alive, and Super Slimey with Young Thug failed to fulfill the promise of their scintillating collab on “Relationship.” With WRLD on Drugs, Juice WRLD is attempting what only Zaytoven has consistently managed to do: retrieve Future from the Pluto of his own imagination.

The logic underpinning each of Future’s collaborative albums is absent on WRLD on Drugs. Beyond their affinity for prescription drugs and joyless sexual conquest, Juice WRLD and Future don’t appear to have much in common. (If anhedonia and substance abuse were enough to form strong artistic bonds, there’d be more than one classic Flying Burrito Brothers album.) Their voices tell the story: Future, the elder by 15 years, has a tectonic voice, gutbucket rumble that belongs in a barrelhouse; Juice WRLD, a 19-year old Chicagoan whose delivery is borrowed in equal parts from Chief Keef and Blink 182’s Mark Hoppus, has a voice that belongs in a schoolhouse. Future sounds like the final, desperate sips of a bacchanal; Juice WRLD sounds like an over-enthusiastic early-arriver.

There are moments where the contrast between sodden and sprightly lands nicely. Future and Juice WRLD are acutely melodic and instinctive hook writers and, when they evenly divide the labors of songcraft, the results are pretty damn good. But balanced duets like “Jet Lag,” “Realer N Realer,” “Hard Work Pays Off,” and the titular “WRLD on Drugs” are too rare. Rather than performing in sync, the duo frequently sounds like in they’re standing in line, waiting for their turns to rap bromides about casual drug use and sex. When, on “7 A.M. Freestyle,” Juice WRLD listlessly mumbles, “I’m getting money, power, hoes, clothes, nigga, et cetera,” he sounds like he’d rather be getting a good night’s sleep.

Too often, WRLD on Drugs caters to neither Future nor Juice WRLD’s strengths. The teenager became a star not with gnashing street rap but earnestly sung (if naively written) anthems about rejection and endlessly malicious women. These lightweight pop-punk sensibilities are muted in service of his collaborator’s preferred grim, dark palette. Juice WRLD’s a game understudy but, when paired with experienced hedonists like Future, Lil Wayne (“Oxy”), and Young Thug (“Red Bentley”), he’s cowed and timid like a teen at his first strip club.

For Future, the issue is a matter of focus. He can record an album’s worth of druggy trap raps without once emerging from a chemically-induced fugue. But the work is inessential. What makes him a fascinating artist is the depth of depravity and self-loathing he’s capable of mining. Only when the facade of sex and drugs is removed can he kneel before his reflection and see how truly bloodshot his eyeballs have become.