It’s been a long road to Travi$ Scott’s debut album Rodeo; the rapper/producer’s buzz has been building steadily since 2013 when he dropped his mixtape, Owl Pharaoh.
On Rodeo, Scott grounds his trademark nightmarish trap synths and groans just enough for an entry point. ‘Pornagraphy’ kicks off the set, with Scott warbling barely lucid over orchestral synths bubbling to a Hammer Horror climax. Then the track brings in more traditional drums for Scott to engage in some more traditional rapping. The result doesn’t ever feel pandering; instead it feels as if Scott is less trying to appeal to a mainstream audience as much as he’s shoving his ill-fitting experimental influences into a hip hop filter. The result is the other side of the origin of Kanye West. Kanye used the poppier elements of the soul samples hip hop was born out of allowing the emotion in a track to be present in the instrumental as well as the lyrics. Scott does the same with Houston screw, Three Six Mafia, ambient and noisecore influences.
It’s the opposite of ‘headphone music’ it’s ‘stadium music’. Scott uses these tools to push hip-hop to its fantastical limits. Warping horrorcore with trap and creating an intense widescreen sound.
It can be troublesome trying to nail down a definitively great verse from Scott, less because of a lack of skill and more down to the fact that he allows himself to be engulfed by the depth of the his music. Where he can’t lyrically articulate the mood of the track, his production can. His productions are infinitely more intricate than any verse he could write at this point; and this is far from a problem. Throughout the album there are a lot of perfectly crafted songs that are equal parts catchy as well as riotous. To a more skeptical ear, this could sound like intelligent noise, but ‘Apple Pie’ is a simple sweet song about Scott leaving the nest to create a life for himself. All of the elements are at work here: the classic piano on the chorus, the minimal beats and the straight-faced sentiment without being remotely corny and most of all, it’s relatable. It could easily be a crossover hit and shows that Scott is no flash in the pan and knows his way around a great song.
Travi$ bucks expectations with his features. He’s either giving you features like Quavo of Migos and Swae Lee of Rae Sremmurd that you’d usually turn your nose up at and pushing them to be the highlight of the track. On ‘Piss On Your Grave’, Scott sits back and knows when to let Kanye rhyme-rant, with a brief interjection. Most notably Justin Bieber; Bieber raps on ‘Maria I’m Drunk‘ and flat-out steals the show, it’s an album highlight and proof that Travi$ is a song curator and knows exactly how to play to his features strengths instead of just aimlessly buying verses.
Rodeo takes a melting pot of influences and eschews the traditions of hip hop. This is no longer the disposable genre you know and the result will rattle speakers, ear drums with a depth that will keep these songs in heavy rotation.
