Few artists dream on the identical scale as Travis Scott. As soon as a prodigy beneath the tutelage of Kanye West, the Houston rapper turned the ringleader for a wave of screwed and psychedelic hip-hop primed for buck-wild dwell exhibits. His final album, 2018’s ‘Astroworld’, was a blockbuster amusement park that broke freed from West’s affect and made Scott probably the most marketable figures in hip-hop. He rode its success with chart-topping singles – together with 2019’s ‘Highest In The Room’ – collaborations with Nike, PlayStation, McDonald’s and Fortnite. In 2021, a deadly crowd crush at his Astroworld competition led to 10 deaths and numerous accidents and lawsuits. Final month, a grand jury determined he wouldn’t be indicted, and the rollout for ‘Utopia’ kicked into motion.
From the title and his world-building roll-out, it’s clear that Scott is making an attempt to prime himself but once more. The album is accompanied by a feature-length movie Circus Maximus, a now-binned live performance at Egypt’s Pyramids of Giza and is teasing one other historical world-themed efficiency in Pompeii.
This, his fourth studio album, retreats to the brashness of early mixtapes ‘Owl Pharaoh’ (2013) and ‘Days Earlier than Rodeo’ (2014) and has the identical impulse to intersperse high-gravitas sounds with obscured vocals. You’ll be stunned what utopia appears to be like like – the primary of 5 cowl artworks he revealed appears to be like like an Armand Hammer album cowl. In a current interview, he confused that “individuals must see that Utopia is actual”, and that even a utopia can’t be with out a measure of darkness.
The place Scott invited hip-hop’s all-stars to hitch him on his earlier album, on ‘Utopia’, he reaches throughout the spectrum to enlist pop superstars, entice’s A-Crew, digital experts and different heroes. There’s a three-track run that jumps between beats from Boi-1da and Candy, James Blake, The Alchemist and Pharrell Williams; it rivals OutKast’s ‘Stankonia’ for the way it devours genres and settings into his world.
However Scott sounds maddened by the pursuit of discovering that imprecise world. It’s mirrored in how he places himself within the throes of the quaking opener ’Hyaena’ and the cacophonous Zamrock of ‘Sirens’. “I’m only one angel away from blockin’ out the satan,” he raps on the stark ‘Misplaced Perpetually’. Throughout the runtime, Scott’s vocals are extra expressive than ever, injecting atmospheres with guttural screams, howls and megaphoned professions to God’s energy: “To the maker! Vibrator! Room shaker! Earth quaker! Annihilator!” on ‘Trendy Jam’.
Scott’s tendency to separate songs into a number of phases creates stressed experiments in distinction. ‘Skitzo’ transitions from a comparatively tame Younger Thug verse to a beat from the Twilight Zone with reversed textures and paranoid strings. On ‘Misplaced Perpetually’, James Blake’s voice is bent to sound like an outdated Etta James pattern and Scott spins it to attach with Westside Gunn’s militant onomatopoeia.
However ‘Trendy Jam’ offers early indicators of the report’s points with forcing invigorating concepts into uninteresting ones. Teezo Landing offers a spectacularly theatrical efficiency that feels like André 3000 singing in a cabaret, however that is after one of many stalest performances of Scott’s profession over a stiff drum loop that got here from Daft Punk’s Man-Man de Homem-Christeo, his first piece of music for the reason that French duo’s break up in 2021.
For all of the market worth of the function record, whether or not Scott places it to good use varies. With Beyoncé on the Afropop-infused hip-house of ‘Delresto (Echoes)’, he carves out progressions and house for every artist, however ‘My Eyes’ makes clunky cameos out of Bon Iver and Sampha, the latter of whom arrives to croon for an almighty three traces. This problem of underutilisation extends to sheer carelessness at instances. What does it say that Scott has Drake allegedly dissing Pharrell on one observe (‘Meltdown’), and Pharrell producing one other tune (‘Looove’) afterward? Petty phrases from Drake apart, it speaks to a compulsion to have an enormous record of names that impress on paper with no regard for in the event that they match into the bigger idea.
Whereas rapping Travis is extra outstanding however he has lengthy, hungry-sounding verses that say little or no, his deeper conscience talking out hardly ever inside a litany of financial figures and luxurious purchases. ‘My Eyes’ comes closest to sounding like reaching that increased floor with dreamy synths ringing out an achingly harmless melody earlier than Scott references his “1000 on my toes” Cactus Jack Jordans. If attending to utopia means spending a grand on a pair of trainers in accordance with Scott, then he feels like an evangelist with ulterior motives.
On the snarling rage rap of ‘Fe!n’ Scott raps “I’ve been centered on the longer term, by no means on proper now”, however that line exposes the fallacy of ‘Utopia’. By going again to the sound of his early work, Scott steps again into the gargantuan shadow of his mentor. Kanye West – notably the mechanical abrasiveness and fragmented textures of 2014’s ‘Yeezus’ – isn’t just an inspiration however an apparition that looms over Scott’s identification on this album. Scott helped create ‘Yeezus’ so the sentimentality is comprehensible, however he can’t declare that report’s sound any greater than Daft Punk, Mike Dean or Arca can. Whereas ‘Astroworld’ was the proper theme for Scott’s music – we’re going to a theme park! – in making an attempt to navigate a lofty idea like discovering utopia, his ambitions have led him again to somebody who was way more formidable at it.
Particulars
- Launch date: July 28, 2023
- Report label: Cactus Jack/Epic
