Travis Scott — ‘Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight’ ALBUM REVIEW
Travis Scott is a Kanye West prodigy and southern rap connoisseur. His production style borrows almost exclusively from this “new Atlanta” sound; a sound that is exceedingly built on slow-mo rap, druggy lyrics, trap percussion, and repetitive hooks; a sound that’s been heavily popularized by artists such as Future, Young Thug, OG Maco, Migos, and even Chief Keef to an extent; however, where Travis differs from these artists — which was as clear as day on last year’s Rodeo— is his ability to take this sound — a sound that has produced many great singles and club hits — and make it album-worthy. Most of these new Atlanta artists have struggled to produce a solid album that is both conceptually cohesive and instrumentally distinct; generally, their albums do not develop in way you’d expect an album should. But Rodeo did. And it became apparent that artistic development was Travis’ greatest skill.
People say Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight is good. And yes, it has some good moments; moments where you’re hooked into a refrain that’s minimal and catchy; a catchiness that reminds you of how fun music — particularly rap music — can truly be. But this album is not a good album. It’s arguable that Birds has a bad case of the sophomore slump. And in many ways digresses back to the Owl Pharaoh and Days Before Rodeo era in Travis’ career where he didn’t have much of a distinct sound and wasn’t showing much promise as a rapper nor producer.
This album suffers from an array of issues. For starters, it’s not nearly as good as Rodeo was — Rodeo being Travis’ debut commercial album — an album that perfectly captured Travis’ development over the course of approximately three years. Over this time period, Travis had, most notably, worked with Kanye West on Yeezus, the G.O.O.D. Music collective on Cruel Summer, Drake on the song “Company” — and even with rising stars such as Young Thug and Migos. And fortunately, he was able to take his production/song creation experiences and really apply them well into Rodeo. To which he did. And it worked. But whatever knowledge Travis has obtained over the years is completely absent from the production on Birds. From start to finish, the songs on this album are unilaterally empty calories.
Individually, some songs offer insight to interesting ideas musically, but aren’t executed well enough to be taken seriously. Take “biebs in the trap”: the song is relatively stripped down sonically; the instrumental is ethereal and revels in this slow-mo druggy atmospheric sound with an eerie sci-fi sounding synth progression, reminiscent of Kid Cudi’s start to “Too Bad I Have To Destroy You Now”; the term “biebs” obviously a shortened version of Justin Bieber’s last name in reference to cocaine (as Bieber himself is apparently as white as cocaine). The production rested entirely on the shoulders of Travis and Nav as they solely created this song. But it’s ineffective despite everything put into it. This song is sonic Ambien. The hook is barely catchy: “I just poured a 8 in a liter/Throw some jolly ranchers in make it sweeter/Versace my clothes I’m with a white ho/And she snortin’ three lines like Adidas.” The concept of the song, which from my understanding is supposed to portray Travis and Nav hosting some drug-fueled mansion/condo party, is totally unappealing. Travis’ vocal delivery is incredibly sparse and sporadic that simply attempting to learn the words becomes an arduous and irritating task. Who wants to recite a verse so tedious? Also, who is this song for? In a 2015 interview with Billboard, Travis himself explained that he barely drinks alcohol and occasionally smokes weed. When asked about his heavy-drug use, Travis made it clear: “It stresses me out because people think I’m on a lot of drugs, which fucking pisses me off. I’m not at all. … I don’t do coke or any of that crazy-ass shit.” Yeah, totally Travis. Nothing crazy about crushing Xanax into your soda while watching white girls snort lines of cocaine in front of you.
Birds also suffers from many instances of terrible songwriting. Most lyrics on the album are awful, particularly the refrains, hooks, and intros. Birds starts off with terrible intro lyrics: “2AM howlin’ outside/Looking but I cannot find” followed by “So if I make it out tonight/Let’s make it a badass time.” Copy and paste these lyrics into a Miley Cyrus song and they would match almost perfectly. This is in stark contrast to how the intro track on Rodeo began. “Pornography” is the first song off of Rodeo — and it begins with a strange but effective spoken word narration from T.I. Then the hook comes in with Travis delivering this amazing autotuned balladry in which he masterfully conveys this pornographic imagery and hedonism before jumping into the main verses. Lyrically, “Pornography” isn’t bad. It’s definitely not great, but in the context of the song’s progression, the lyrics become progressively more palatable. I can’t say the same for “the ends” nor “way back” which are the first two songs on Birds.
Let’s be clear: Travis Scott is not a great lyricist; he’s never been a great lyricist; and I doubt he will ever be a great lyricist. But the songwriting on Rodeo is vastly better than the songwriting on Birds. I don’t understand how that happens.
Birds also fails conceptually. Every song on Rodeo had a concept — and Travis and his team ardently built the music around the concepts of the songs. It’s obvious on songs like “Antidote” where the chorus is so easy to recite or on “Maria I’m Drunk” where Young Thug’s warbling high-pitched voice forces you to sing the “Call your friends and let’s get drunk” line in the same voice as him. Those songs are still fresh in my brain. They’re memorable and easy to jump into while still retaining a quality concept and sound. What is the idea behind the song “coordinate”? Travis is literally rapping about doing drugs while he’s wearing his precious rockstar skinny jeans. On “sweet sweet” which has one the most boring refrains I’ve ever heard; a refrain masking itself as a hook, when it’s not a hook — Travis loops the instrumental from the refrain back to the verse, essentially offering no instrumental song progression. Plus, the song’s title has almost nothing to do with the song, other than him saying the word “sweet’” repeatedly on the refrain. The song could literally be called “cocoa” and its impression would still be the same. This lack of conceptual idea is found on most of these songs. “sdp interlude” serves as interlude at the very least but ends up being boring and repetitive. “guidance” is lyrically lackluster and bland despite its attempts to be a vibrant dancehall song.
Birds didn’t utilize featured musical performances well at all. With the exception of Young Thug and Quavo, and Kendrick Lamar, the featured artists were underwhelming or uninteresting. On Birds, Travis repeatedly allows his features to do their verses ahead of his; and by the time he appears on the song, he doesn’t improve it; in many ways, he actually makes the song worse. “through the late night” is a perfect example of this awful “feature-first” method. Cudi does his usual monotonous crooning/humming routine — “HMM-MMM-MEH-MEH!” — which is incessantly irritating. And by the time Travis appears on the song, he’s dropping lines like “stroke my cactus” and “shootin’ shots like the NRA” which are total eye-roll moments.
Musically, he nails it on “pick up the phone.” The song is structurally and conceptually better than all of the other songs on Birds. The intro-verse-hook-bridge-hook-verse pattern works fantastically. The song is full of energy, thriving off a playful synth pattern; the song’s bridge is led by Young Thug’s unique vocal performance and charisma; and the track is blessed by an appearance from Quavo of Migos, who offers witty lines: “Pick up the phone/Macaulay Culkin baby, Home Alone” and “Wrist polar bear Klondike” — these aren’t the most introspective lyrics, but they sound good in coordination with the subject of the song.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Travis said he “cut straight to the meat” with Birds. “I didn’t leave any room for, ‘Somebody might fuck with this part.’ I wanted to make parts of the album that everybody would enjoy.” The problem is that he didn’t cut straight to the meat. There are many parts on this album that I felt were full of fat with no meat in sight.
Birds was obviously constructed during Rodeo; there’s not a doubt in my mind that these are Rodeo B-sides with slight refinements. The fact that “wonderful” — a song that is clearly a Rodeo throwaway — and was released December 31, 2015, approximately three months after Rodeo came out — is even a song on Birds strengthens my case for this album being mostly, if not completely, leftover songs from Rodeo. Also, a lot of these songs are tonally and instrumentally similar to those found on Rodeo.
There are several parts of this album I enjoy, but my enjoyment doesn’t trump the quality of the music. As fans, we sometimes get caught into the hype of new releases; we get attached to artists who we deem in our heart of hearts as “legendary” or “untouchable” — and we forget that these same people are still human and imperfect. I’m not only a fan of Travis’ work; I’m also an observer of his growth as an artist. My main issue with Birds is the lack of progression. This album does not progress beyond Rodeo. I personally don’t see the purpose of this project serving as an album. Birds probably would have been better off as a commercial mixtape. Or potentially as an EP.
If you enjoy easy/programmable music and will listen to anything just because the branding is there, then you’ll enjoy Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight. But I personally find this album desolate and uninspiring.
Rating: 4/10
Selected tracks: “pick up the phone” “goosebumps”
You can follow Aaron Lorick on Instagram, or on Twitter at @aaronlorick.
