There's that brief moment at the beginning of "First Take" when Travis' vocals levitate over a woozily minimal beat, its melancholic power erased as soon as he starts rapping and dropping "Lit!" ad-libs. With its skillful Washed Out sample, "SDP Interlude" achieves the project's trippiest and most unorthodox moment, although it spends over two minutes repeating one line ad nauseam. There's the gorgeous coda to "Way Back," in which whale song-esque backing vocals, a Mike Dean guitar solo, and twinkling synths make a call for women to bend it "way, way back for me" much more transcendent than it actually is.
His new Apple Music mixtape, Birds In The Trap Sing McKnight, offers a few of these colorfully weird moments, but not as many as its two predecessors. More accurately, considering his fealty to Ye and high fashion, Travis Scott is the embodiment of " Vegas on acid, seen through Yves St. There's never much depth to sink your teeth into, but usually enough temporal distractions to make his music exciting and intoxicating for the first few listens. Friends of mine who've visited Las Vegas have told me that a whirlwind weekend trip is better than a weeklong one, that all of the soulless debauchery hits like a jolt of energy but wears off quickly, and that's Travis Scott in a nutshell.
Rodeo was his most ambitious attempt at alchemy, an hour-plus crammed full of ideas, quickly-transitioning songs, and funhouse mirror experiments with various genres. On 2014's Days Before Rodeo, he managed the unlikely welding job of psychedelic rock to Metro Boomin, Young Thug, and Migos' New Atlanta, deftly showing those two boundary-pushing genres' similarities, namely their penchant for druggy soundscapes and introspection balanced with hedonism. There was the grungy glam sound he lent to Yeezus tracks "New Slaves" and "Guilt Trip," his first introduction to many of us, and his defining moment in the Kanye West think tank spotlight. If there's one thing Travis Scott excels at, it's sounding cool.
Scott is at his best when his infectious melodies are underscored by moody textures, basslines, and keys.The majority of "Birds In The Trap Sing McKnight," right down to its title, is the product of brains that aren't Travis Scott's. And the thumping “Coffee Bean,” with its soothing electric guitar, sees the rapper opening up about his love life and his fears about the future. Scott’s cadence on cuts like “Skeletons” and “5% Tint”-which samples the piano riff from Goodie Mob’s “Cell Therapy”-is simply impenetrable. “No Bystanders” is a flawed cocktail of zealous but passable verses, a tiresome hook, (an homage to Three 6 Mafia’s “Tear Da Club Up”), and a beat that alone can’t save the song from feeling trite. While Astroworld is certainly Scott at his most fully formed, it’s not all cathartic soundscapes and self-reflective raps engineered perfectly. “You won’t succeed tryna learn me/I stick to the roads in my journey.” Blake’s searing vocals reverberate in the listener’s mind like a spell. It executes a level of emotional depth, that, for Scott, has only come in spurts on his earlier projects. Produced by J Beatzz, the prolific Mike Dean, and Scott himself, it’s the project’s most introspective moment.
It also features a harmonica-playing Stevie Wonder.
On “Stop Trying to Be God,” Scott taps James Blake and everyone’s favorite Hum-God Kid Cudi. While Drizzy certainly holds his own, Scott gets downright magisterial over hard-hitting drums, rapping “This shit way too formal, ya’ll know I don’t follow suit/Stacey Dash, most these of girls don’t got a clue.” The Drake-assisted “Sicko Mode” is a more straightforward attempt. The psychedelic and purely gorgeous “Stargazing” has the air of a lucid dream it delightfully switches tempo mid-track and creates a pocket for Scott to get open. He knows exactly where he’s going and it’s not anywhere he’s been before. Scott follows his impulses like a wide-eyed youth gunning for the next high. It blends the euphoria of an acid trip with a disarming angst fit for all night raging. The 17-track LP, which boasts a hefty cast, is the Houston rapper-producer’s most visceral and boisterously declarative to date. At the heart of Scott’s third studio album is the pursuit of an unquestionable singularity, of honoring his stylistic forebears without adopting their aesthetic.