UTOPIA

I thought Travis Scott could maybe change my dislike towards trap. Unfortunately, he could not.

This album isn't necessarily bad or anything, but jeez is it boring. I guess the production is mostly good and varied for the most part, but trap always feels too low energy for me to enjoy at all. I'll give it to Travis, at least all the tracks sound unique enough as he certainly has a knack for experimenting with different sounds, but I wish he sped up the pace a bit more at times. After relistening to some of these tracks, it feels like it's more of a rapping problem I have than a production problem, as the beats on most of these tracks are actually pretty solid and energetic. Maybe I just have unreasonable expectations, as the rap I've been enjoying most comes from OutKast, Little Simz, Kanye, JID, and Kendrick, who all make this feel like a snoozefest. I feel like this album doesn't offer anything when it comes to rapping, lyricism, or production that these artists can't just do way better at while also keeping my attention way more. This would be less of a problem if this album were shorter, but there's nineteen tracks and I think that's WAY too many. Even on the songs themselves, I found myself checking to see how much longer was in them and audibly groaning after seeing how much was left. If this were cut down by half I would definitely enjoy the record a lot more, though I can't be sure by how much.

Most of the features didn't do much for me, which is standard for rap music and music in general, but I think Beyonce sounded great on "DELRESTRO" and SZA gave a great performance on "TELEKINESIS". Also, I find Justin Vernon's connections in the hip hop world to be both very confusing, interesting, and funny. If those being my favorite features/tracks on the album don't say a lot about me not being much of a trap fan, the fact that the 20 second acoustic guitar outro on "MELTDOWN" being my favorite production moment on the album certainly does.

All in all, I think the way that most Travis fans felt about "K-POP" is sorta how I felt about the whole project. It's not bad, necessarily, but not engaging enough for me and certainly not my thing. I hope Travis fans feel like they got what they were expecting after the long wait though.

Favorite Tracks: DELRESTRO, TELEKINESIS.