It’s easy to tell when Travis Scott is “trying to rap,” as on album opener “the ends,” because he really turns down the Auto-Tune. The two main criticisms that have followed Scott his entire career are that he doesn’t rap about anything, and when he does rap, he doesn’t do it well. Better to do more with less than try to pack as many flourishes as possible onto one track. The latter culminates with that effect turned into a beautiful glissando that cuts off abruptly. “sweet sweet,” for example, opens with a glossy noise recalling mid-2000s AIM sound effects and the standout “ pick up the phone” features a hollowed-out synth that sounds like it’s been digitized 10 times over. The production across Birds’ 14 tracks is as big and important as any across Scott’s discography, but every outsourced producer here creates something bespoke to Scott’s developing aesthetic, with at least one alien soundbite making an otherwise conventional beat something special.
The use of synthetic sound curios across Birds also help define this world, this pre-fab movie studio lot where Scott’s antics start to make more sense. His apocalyptic vanity is less high art than it is camp, but his commitment is similar to Lana Del Rey’s high-stakes ennui ballads on Ultraviolence, or all of the soapy affairs across David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks.” Because he does not provide great detail or context as to why he’s in dire need of salvation, it comes off as both grandiose and vacuous, which, at best, is just really fun to listen to. On “through the late night,” he utters, “Relieve my heart of malice,” but offers no reason why that may be necessary.
Even the peak ridiculous moments on Birds are delivered with a completely straight face.
Most Travis Scott songs sound very serious, and Birds finds him at his most melodramatic. Scott remains committed to his signature sound on Birds but has finally made small tweaks to make it his own. Rodeo simply amped up the grandeur with little substance or variation. Both those tapes featured a recognizable “Travis Scott Sound”-an even larger, even more gothic take on Lex Luger’s trap anthems. Further, his production selection showed little growth from his largely self-produced 2013 debut Owl Pharaoh, and its well-received follow-up mixtape Days Before Rodeo. Songs ran much longer than they needed, letting the vibes simmer until you realized they were trite. On last year’s Rodeo, Scott struggled to balance ambition, quality, and star power. Scott’s second studio album, Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight, is the Houston rapper’s most concise and cohesive project to date. He embodies its ethos: take the artificial and common, then distort, re-contextualize, and exaggerate to make it something beautiful.
Long West’s mimic, Travis Scott has performed in the clothing and attended Vetements runway shows with his mentor. Among Gvasalia’s admirers is Kanye West, and with his taste goes the rest of contemporary hip-hop.
Created by the Margiela and Louis Vuitton-trained designer Demna Gvasalia, the line takes inspiration from the common its name is even just French for “clothing.” Non-luxury materials often highlight Gvasalia’s runway shows, which take ordinary items and brands and fit them to haute couture with extreme, unnatural silhouettes. First presented in 2014, Vetements is among the buzziest new fashion lines.