Travis Scott - Astroworld ALBUM REVIEW

hi everyone Houston e10 tanno here the internet's busiest music nerd and it's time for a review of the new travis scott album Astroworld this is the third full-length album from rapper singer producer and songwriter Travis Scott truth be told I didn't really think that much of Travis Scott when he first burst onto the scene as a Kanye West protege the 2013 al farro mixtape showed a very impressionable Scott drowning in his Kid Cudi and Kanye West influences barely a properly assembled and mixed project as a lot of the songs on this thing just sounded like a mess his 2014 days before Rodeo tape sounded like it had a bigger presentation a bigger budget but still very much a mess overall it seemed like an experimental but a misguided take on the current state of trap although Travis did seem to be getting more distinct vocally and aesthetically with all of these spacey beats his heavy use of auto-tune a kind of dark psychedelic style was bubbling up so with these couple of releases I did not foresee the incredible contribution to pop rap and trap that Travis would be bringing the very next year on his 2015 album rodeo it's like everything Travis was shooting for on previous efforts just made sense here with the Warped vocals the heavy use of auto-tune all the crazy zany animated ad-libs the multiple phases that many of his songs worked through the additional features on this thing the trippy instrumentals Travis was building himself up not to be just an artist but also a curator much in the same way that a Kanye West or in ASAP Rocky or a dj khaled sort of plays a directorial role on a song bringing a lot of different talent together like in the pop rap equivalent of a play where he's trying to get every person involved in a cut to create something bigger than the sum of its parts after all on this very album Astroworld there is a track titled sicko mode where Travis does drop a line saying who put the [ __ ] together I'm the glue there were some very epic singles off of rodeo that still burned for me today like Nano to Mono 3500 antidote these tracks and many of the deep cuts on that album just made for very sound rich mind-altering catchy trap music with super-sweet almost elegant hooks sometimes for the genre it was just a really refreshing approach with some very top-notch production which is why Travis's next album birds in the trap just left me so confused it's it's such a demotion in quality if Travis Scott's rodeo was the total package then birds in the trap was merely the hollow vibe left over from it little in the way of material or songwriting on this album that you could call infectious the Travis thugger collaboration pick up the phone is maybe the best track on the entire record outside of that it just kind of felt like Travis was merely delivering the trippy aesthetic of his last album but without the same level of impressive guest performances production the multiple phases the memorable hooks the surreal instrumentals the album felt kind of effortless and it was really shocking just how tedious some of the songs on this thing were it's now been 2 years since the release of that album although travis has in the meantime put out that honcho Jack Jack honcho collaborative record there is that but even though travis has been keeping busy it doesn't seem like he's been as eager to jump right into his next album and I was kind of worried going into this thing not just because of the nasty taste that Birds left in my mouth but also because the lead single from this thing butterfly effect felt very much like another helping of the redundant formless flavorless song writing and structuring that was so prevalent on that album thankfully Astroworld is kind of a return to form for Travis in comparison with birds I find that Astroworld brings better hooks better production better features and he also gets back in the habit of bringing awesome beat switches and musical detours into the fold the song stargazing is a pretty great intro to the album and also shows Travis reclaiming the throne as the king of vibe maybe this track is not as grand an entrance as T I literally narrating your musical come up but in comparison with rodeo astral world seems to be a lot less autobiographical and more of an exercise and aesthetics and mood so on this track we find some round bass some snappy trap percussion some sparkly watery guitar notes of course all of this is playing against a few layers of Travis Scott vocals some very animated ad lids it's lit some scratchy auto-tune wailing and of course Travis's deep lead vocal delivering some lyrics about like a drug-induced insanity with a very melodic flow overall the track is pure euphoria and undergoes some very beautiful instrumental shifts before kind of closing out into complete silence for a beat switch where Travis starts rapping about pretty much his current state with some pretty wild quotables I love the line of this leg in the track when he talks about how it's not a mosh pit if there are no injuries it's cool when Travis drops a line here and there that's actually kind of funny or sticky or memorable but above all else it sounds great following this track is the cut carousel which is just as drenched in psychedelic delays effects and some pretty odd samples there's this persistent sound of a crowd in the background faintly going I love the use and placement of Frank Ocean on the track to his understated choruses very sweet and moody when he gets into his upper register it's pretty passionate and fiery there's something about the sound and the vibe of the track that reminds me a little bit of The Flaming Lips but almost like trap music answer to that with the purposefully pristine and and very sparkly synthesizers the rumbly distorted bass the sound of the track is simultaneously unsettling but also really blissful and there's something about the song that despite its sounding so psychedelic and out there it feels incredibly cogent Travis Scott just seems to write psychedelic hip-hop music from a very meticulous detail oriented and almost sober place my one issue with this track might be some of Frank's incredibly esoteric lyrics which come off kind of disjointed maybe they're more symbolic than I'm understanding them to be but either way the track is a highly for me I love the transition from the end of this track into the false intro of psycho mode featuring a little bit of a like a partial of a Drake verse there's this murky chunky bass that follows up immediately after with a beat switch with SiC flow from Travis and a lot of lyrical debauchery after yet another B switch Drake returns with a full verse and performance Drake brings this really gentle smooth delivery that works perfectly with the airy instrumental ease found himself on top of I don't really take issue with his lyrics outside there seems to be a moment where he raps about taking half of a xanax as described to fall asleep on an airplane until his plane lands and while there's absolutely nothing wrong with taking prescription drugs as directed by a medical professional that's not really why there's such as an craze in the hip hop community right now it's not really why rappers rap about the drug you might as well be dropping a [ __ ] verse about taking aspirin all that being said though do not take prescription drugs recreationally they will destroy your life and [ __ ] you up thank you speaking of Drake though some of the quick musical transitions in song on these tracks compounded with how some of these tracks splice into one another as they're starting and ending actually reminds me of Drake's more life playlists in some respects there are moments where this album does have the feel of a carefully assembled playlist but obviously Travis produces this thing to have more of a futuristic tone and to be more than just musical wallpaper the song r.i.p screw is a tribute to the late and legendary DJ Screw whose contributions to rap music through chopped and screwed and just the houston scene in general have been hugely influential for Travis Scott on this cut Travis brings some super wavy synthesizers some warped vocalizations from sway Leah Rae sremmurd Fame some weird low five vocal samples as well it's a decent track it's very low-key its kind of Spacey it's got a nice vibe to it but in my opinion it's not musically or structurally as impressive as the following cuss stop trying to be God which i think is the closest Travis comes on this album to legitimately pulling off a ballad and no that's not just because James Blake pops up in the last leg of the song delivering these gorgeous lead vocals some enveloping church organs and an orgasmic harmonica solo with that that I assume is coming from Stevie Wonder because I know he has taken part in this album it has it's on this record too but also Travis is singing and very somber rapping in the first moments of the song are pretty beautiful in an odd way the hook on this thing is very understated and sweet features some very sweet Kid Cudi hums and lyrically Travis finds some introspective expressions with a lot of lyrical nods to strippers rollies and commandments the song no bystanders is another highlight for me but still kind of a head-scratcher the track opens with this bold manic proclamation the soaring lead vocal Travis Scott saying that he's on a plane for ten hours he's telling the the the people on the plane there's no flight plan if Travis Scott was so nervous on planes maybe he should have gotten the other half of that his antics from Drake earlier on the album and then he would have been calmed down thank you this song hits a really weird juxtaposition where the synths drop out and then all of a sudden you have like these gang vocals just chanting which could be a three 6 mafia reference maybe a little John reference or something then transitioning out of this we have the verse which lyrically is coming from another place entirely it's such a cohesive sounding song musically each section of the track segues into the next beautifully and smoothly but thematically it's so disjointed in all over the place it sounds like the the creation of someone whose mind is going a million miles a minute the song skeletons is a kind of okay detour in the tracklist the instrumental on this cut is handled by none other than tame impala so you can kind of expect a very nice crispy Basie psychedelic pop throwback with a lot of synths on this one but the rapping the flow and the delivery from Travis is a bit underwhelming as it sounds like he's mostly living in Kanye's shadow on this cut he is trying so hard on this track to pull from that direction but his lyricism while it is vulgar there's not really anything in the way of interesting wordplay or a sense of humor or personality coming from that or really his inflection his tone there's also some kind of fuzzy loaf I buried weakened vocal riffing on the track - maybe he could have taken a brighter or more significant spot on the record but I think his inclusion at this point on the album is merely a teaser a warm-up for his incredible contribution to the next track wake up with a very light beat some acoustic guitar licks and a lot of really ghostly and and trippy and strange little musical effects and tidbits kind of popping up in the background it's like the song is haunted this track in my opinion is far superior to that of any time Travis and The Weeknd have been on the same track up until this point I also love the trippy rush of synthesizers of the mid point on this track with Abell proclaiming that this person who is singing - controls his life whether he lives or dies and if he ODS he dies alone with no heartbeat [ __ ] so good [ __ ] so sweet even though the lyrics on this track and many other moments are super rudimentary and straightforward and really just kind of gets to the point that there is something beautifully blunt about it I guess it's high impact it's high sensuality I'd say the lust of this song is intoxicating then there is the excellent 5% tint with an awesome goody mob reference right at the start who's that with some heavy rumbling bass and these really like lo-fi distant very regal piano chords boom button Tenten also some ghoulish laughing samples popping up in the background like they're off some Halloween tape or something it's fantastically dark and weird and enhance very nicely with these gorgeous little swells of strings and scents and also features an outro that is so heavenly it makes the 902 a no single from a few years ago sound plane the song nc-17 also finds subtle ways to tease elegance out of the trap genre with the tracks beat revolving around these plinky metallic wintry melodies Travis delivering this chorus very melodic flow with more harmonized background vocals cavernous ad-libs there's this beautiful rush of almost classical pianos and instrumentation that sort of flies into the track just before introduced to a nice 21 savage feature actually one of his best features in a while with the stand out your [ __ ] gave the kid cudi but I'm not signed to yay i nutted on her cheek her new name is babyface but not the only time on the track that I laughed out loud I also thought it was funny when Travis said eatin the poo nan made his braids wet I love the following cut Astro Thunder Travis goes into kind of a psychedelic folk direction thanks to some extra production and instrumentation from John Mayer and Thundercat not something I would have expected him to pull off as well as he did but yet he does it there's a kind of important lyrical mantra on this track that I thought I would point out with Travis talking about how it seems like he feels or like life feels a little distant and it does seem like on this album there is kind of a wall between Travis and reality because this is one of the many spots on the album that just feel like an extended lucid dream the song you have 70 is a kind of Pleasant cut on the album but not all that significant up-and-comer gonna has a pretty prominent placement on the track he really takes over a great deal of the song though I don't really care that much for him vocally he just kind of sounds like a poor man's young thug Travis's vocal contributions not nearly as memorable or as standout by comparison there's kind of a fizzled finish a very weak ending to the song and navs feature in the last leg of the track is just mixed solo it's buried it sucks I don't even know why it made it onto the track if you are not going to put it in a place where people can actually hear it why would you bother now after this point unfortunately I feel like the quality of the album starts to go downhill a little bit not anything that I think is absolutely trash but a lot of cuts that just kind of pale in comparison to the first few sections of the record the song who what has a banger beat but a kind of awkward flow from Travis which is a little unlike him typically he brings a very catchy head-bobbing flow but not here unfortunately migos popping onto the track do very little to save the situation to the synth arpeggios and the one-two-three-four-five chorus on the cut are pretty much the only standout things about it after listening to it multiple times and within the context of the album I still don't care that much for butterfly effect to me structurally lyrically melodically instrumentally it just doesn't really seem that significant once you've heard the first half of the song you've pretty much heard everything that you need to hear and much of the time unfortunately without a standout instrumental when Travis is completely alone on a track it does tend to expose just how weak lyrically and vocally he can be as shown on the closing track which is a very low-key cut with a chill laid-back beat not nearly as trippy and soaked in effects as a lot of the other songs here mostly because Travis seems to set this personal introspective tone on the cut like you're going to get this verse where he's kind of spilling out his guts and really letting you know what he's thinking but lyrically Travis lacks the ability to string together anything on this song that is truly significant or meaningful I mean he kind of alludes to his relationship with Kylie Jenner ending or having to pay alimony payments maybe frankly it's really disappointing ending to the album even with some of the lavish string additions on it Houston fornication isn't as redundant in structure as some of the other tracks in the last leg of this album but it is very much redundant in spirit like conceptually aesthetically what is this track really adding to the tracklist at this point it just seems like another Spacey trap cut which Travis does well it's his specialty but I kind of feel like he runs the risk of staling out his sound by throwing more tracks like this into the mix with no catchy hook no interesting guests and no interesting transitions to enhance Travis's performance which one could argue that maybe that exposes a lack of talent on Travis's part that he can't hold the track completely on his own and just have it be fire but personally I think there's more than one way to skin a cat make a good record or be a good artist and unfortunately Travis's talent for directing guiding and curating great ideas isn't as sharp as it could be throughout this entire album as again I think the quality and the excitement of the record trails off in the last third to a great degree all that being said though I do think this record is far superior to that of birds and it does seem like Travis is putting in the effort once again to not only make great tracks bring great content forward but also push the trap sound into the future and continuing to keep open this through way between hip-hop and psychedelic music and the mainstream can't say this thing blew me away but I still think it's a very good record with a lot of great tracks on it I'm feeling a decent too strong seven on this thing transition have you given this album a listen did you love it did you hate it what would you rate it you're the best you're the best what should i review next hit like if you like please subscribe and please don't cry over here next to my head is another review that you can check out hit that up or the links subscribe to the channel Anthony Fantana Travis Scott extra world forever

Channel: theneedledrop

Views: 2,530,404

Keywords: album, review, music, reviews, indie, underground, new, latest, lyrics, full song, listen, track, concert, live, performance, update, the needle drop, anthony fantano, vlog, talk, discussion, music nerd, travis scott, astroworld, rap, hip hop, pop, r&b, stargazing, sicko mode, carousel, stop trying to be god, drake, butterfly effect, yosemite, nav, no bystanders, rodeo, birds in the trap

Id: t4RjOz8dKro

Length: 18min 28sec (1108 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 07 2018