In Future’s discography, the stages of grief go something like this: Start with rage, move on quickly from sorrow to shopping to strippers, and finish up with a life-changing trip to Abu Dhabi. That’s where Future and his trusty sidekick DJ Esco arrived for a last-minute performance in 2014. But after Esco was arrested at the airport on marijuana-possession charges, he was hauled to an Abu Dhabi prison. As the lone American in lockup, the dread-headed DJ learned basic Arabic, prayed five times a day, and obsessed over the melody of an unreleased Future track, the last thing he’d listened to on the fateful plane ride there. He was eventually released after serving a 56-day sentence—one that could have gone much longer, had a warden not taken a liking to him. Esco’s incarceration forms the backstory of 56 Nights, the final chapter of Future’s career-revitalizing mixtape trilogy released between 2014 and 2015. It’s an album that looms large in the Future Hive mythos: During Esco’s arrest, authorities seized a hard drive containing two years’ worth of Future tracks—prompting the rapper to team up with producer Zaytoven on the hit release Beast Mode. But the Abu Dhabi experience also solidified the bond between Future and Esco—and lit a creative fuse under the rapper, who cut two tracks (“Never Gon Lose” and “56 Nights”) right after the DJ’s release. The mixtape’s remaining tracks were expertly culled by Esco from the hundreds of songs retrieved from the famously seized hard drive. They find Future skulking, swerving, and self-medicating his way through an after-hours underworld full of gloriously sinister beats from 808 Mafia’s Southside, which apply the Kill Bill siren liberally. Still, it’s Esco—serving as Future’s friend, muse, and A&R guru—who deserves credit for the tape’s conciseness and perfect sequencing (Future originally credited 56 Nights to Esco, relegating himself to the mixtape’s “host”). And it’s Esco who should be thanked for the inclusion of one of Future’s all-timers: the instantly anthemic “March Madness,” the same song that had kept Esco going through his 56-night ordeal in prison.