The first thing
that strikes one about a song varies person to person. Some people get hooked
by the music, others will pay attention to the voice, and some fall hard for
lyrics. There's no right or wrong – just depends on you.
How much you
enjoy Travi$ Scott's long awaited debut,
Rodeo, is going to depend almost entirely on how much you can enjoy his
music, and not so much his lyrics or delivery. It's not that these two things are
bad, per se; it's more that Scott does't use them to say much of anything. But
the album sounds fucking great.
Judging from Rodeo, Scott has spent the eight years
since Kanye West's groundbreaking 808s
& Heartbreak came out listening to that album, and that album only.
Maybe a little Future mixed in every now and then. And if you don't remember
much of 808s, first thing you should
do is go listen to it again, because the thing rules, and I guarantee you is
better than you remember. Repeat listens highlight how much detail West paid to
the sonics on the album. Rodeo is a
kind of expansion of that same palette West was using, and in some ways it
sounds better than West's album did. But West made that album out of a
soul-scrapping loneliness and bitterness. I'm not sure what made Scott stay in
that lane for his entire album.
Listening to Rodeo multiple times for the piece, I
was struck by how little I wrote in my notes about the lyrics. I have a lot of
scribbles about the music, how the beats and layering of icy bass lines and
keys hit me, but almost nothing about the rhymes. In hip-hop, the genre of
music perhaps best sustaining the art of poetry, that's a problem. Scott seems
to be entirely focused on getting faded, fucking, and the emptiness that seems
to follow him wherever he goes – and he does this mainly by obscuring his voice
in auto-tune. These are certainly subjects you can find on almost any rap
record, but the best ones have something to say about these things, or at least
filter it through an interesting perspective. You'll often hear West, Kendrick Lamar, Drake and Killer Mike touch on these subjects, but they each bring a
unique take on them. It almost seems like Scott is checking things off a list,
just because that's what you do in rap. He has some moments of insight, like
"90210," where he talks about his relationship with his grandmother.
It gives him a humanity and worldview that most of the other tracks are missing.
The best tracks
are those with strong guest verses, where Scott lets his chilly aesthetic mesh
with someone else's approach. "Pray 4 Love" features The Weeknd
(fresh off his killer album, Beauty Behind The Madness), and he brings some gorgeous layers to the ballad. Scott's
booming echoes of words like "pills," go down a little easier when
they have The Weeknd's voice to lift things up. The best song here is probably
the relentlessly silly "Piss On Your Grave," featuring West himself.
The track features some killer electric guitar – imagine if Jimi Hendrix was
raised from the dead and played with George Clinton for the past couple
decades. The song is mainly West and Scott shit talking for two minutes about
pissing on their enemies, but it's fun to hear some fire coming through the
speakers.
Nailing down a musical
vibe is no small achievement, and that's what saves Rodeo from being entirely mediocre. Scott has the sound – now he
just needs the fury.
Rodeo is
out on Epic.
Also recommended this week:
Against Me!'s
live double album, 23 Live Sex Acts.
Dan Auerbach (The
Black Keys) soul-blues side project The Arcs's debut, Yours, Dreamily,.
Alabama Shakes'
lead singer Brittany Howard's side project, Thunderbitch.
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