Trippie Redd arrived just in time for the emo rap moment, as if summoned by the seance that is “XO TOUR Llif3.” The 18-year-old Canton, Ohio native treats Marilyn Manson as a guiding light, and he started out making what he describes as “alt rock” songs before he deleted them. Trippie cites melody-friendly rappers like Lil Wayne and Ja Rule as inspirations and has a fascination with KISS, Slipknot, and K-pop boy band Big Bang’s G-Dragon. Sometimes his songs channel melodic hardcore, and other times they’re indebted to the growls of Chief Keef. Trippie got the words “love scars” tattooed on his face and then made the tat a song title for what became his big viral hit. “Love Scars” is a gripping tune that makes plain the ache and (seemingly) life-or-death seriousness of teenage romance: “You used to say you in love/I used to say that shit back/Taking that shit from the heart/Now look where the fuck where we at.” After building a huge following on SoundCloud, Trippie shared his second mixtape of 2017, A Love Letter To You 2. The tape doesn’t fully realize the promise of “Love Scars,” but there are signs of a melody savvy MC working out kinks.
Trippie’s breakout mixtape, A Love Letter to You, earned its title, mixing scrawled bawler raps in with tortured ballads. There were songs like “Deeply Scared” and “Romeo & Juliet” that depended largely on melodramatic turns: “Shawty on fire, and she really blazin’/Flames Armageddon, yelling Jesus save me/I’ma take her soul, if she try to play me/‘Cause that’s all mine, that’s my lil baby,” he barked, as if he were truly being consumed by hellfire. The sequel isn’t as interested in twisted romance, though there are flashes of that same energy—on “Feel Good” and “Overdose on L1fe,” especially. He’s more interesting in that space, where he’s forced to think about someone other than himself. Here, we mostly get random jawing. His POV as a flex rapper requires too much colorless navel-gazing, and it doesn’t help that he has little feel for songcraft.
Unconventional song structures are all the rage among the SoundCloud elite, who either live on hooks, distract listeners with constant motion, or deafen them by cranking the decibels way up. Trippie Redd is all hooks, and he likes to mix and match parts, with mixed success. Few songs on A Love Letter to You 2 have more than one Trippie verse. There are songs where he only sings the chorus. Those hooks are usually just echoes, the same word, phrase, or basic idea repeated or reiterated. “I Know How to Self Destruct <3” is mostly just him howling “I know,” as if into the void, taking the song’s title a bit too literally. When there are verses, the lengths vary from absurdly brief to seemingly endless. Sometimes there are choruses longer than verses. He’s a rambler, so stanzas can come out circuitous (as on “Today”), hysteric, or downright incoherent; they’d be digressions if his songs went anywhere. Still, nearly every Trippie song can be enjoyable on the condition you don’t pay too close attention.
Trippie Redd is often compared to Lil Uzi Vert, and there are similarities in tone and technique. (Calling a song “Woah Woah Woah” certainly doesn’t help dispel the notion.) Trippie isn’t the charmer Uzi is, and his phrases are less earwormy, but he really commits to many of the performances; his showings rely heavily on execution and histrionics. Because of this, the songs play up a nearly biblical struggle—sin, wickedness, greed, lust, hell, heaven, and unholiness. His scenes are like the circles in SoundCloud rap’s Inferno: Sipping Actavis, lusting after women, relentlessly chasing blue-faced hundreds, trapped in a savage lifestyle. “Dangerous” weighs the hazards of this cycle—the money, the drugs, the people. He navigates darkness in “Hellboy,” where Canton, which has one of the highest violent crime rates in the country, is a literal hellscape he’s escaping from, into a rap paradise of his own making. “Deadman’s Wonderland” is like a dread-filled note to self: “You gotta get this fuckin’ bread, man/‘Cause if you don’t then you’s a dead man.” The last words uttered on ALLTY2 are “Don’t bring me down, bring me closer to God.” If Trippie could see any one of these ideas to their conclusion, it’d be deeply satisfying.
A Love Letter to You 2 never fully realizes any of the concepts it sets in motion, and the tape doesn’t match the fire or flair of its predecessor, but Trippie Redd does show signs of untapped potential. There’s value in the explosiveness of his voice and his ability to segue, how effortlessly he transitions from a mush-mouthed delivery to bellowed, impassioned pleas. And his ad-libs can take on lives of their own, expanding into full-blown croons in the middle distance. On “Overweight,” he pauses abruptly just before the end of each bar as the beat ripples beneath him, eventually building into a complete wail. Alongside Cydnee with a C, he erupts into full-throated howls for “Back of My Mind”; her pristine vocals balance his hollers. While keys beam on opener “Bust Down,” he excitedly gloats in a nasally whine. As he breaks down the levels of his savagery—taught to him by his mama, the streets, and now the industry—Trippie Redd sets his default mode. But on A Love Letter to You 2, his wildman enthusiasm isn’t enough to sate.
