First presented in 2014, Vetements is among the buzziest new fashion lines. 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. Among Gvasalia’s admirers is Kanye West, and with his taste goes the rest of contemporary hip-hop. Long West’s mimic, Travis Scott has performed in the clothing and attended Vetements runway shows with his mentor. He embodies its ethos: take the artificial and common, then distort, re-contextualize, and exaggerate to make it something beautiful.
Scott’s second studio album, Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight, is the Houston rapper’s most concise and cohesive project to date. On last year’s Rodeo, Scott struggled to balance ambition, quality, and star power. Songs ran much longer than they needed, letting the vibes simmer until you realized they were trite. 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. Both those tapes featured a recognizable “Travis Scott Sound”—an even larger, even more gothic take on Lex Luger’s trap anthems. Rodeo simply amped up the grandeur with little substance or variation.
Scott remains committed to his signature sound on Birds but has finally made small tweaks to make it his own. Most Travis Scott songs sound very serious, and Birds finds him at his most melodramatic. Even the peak ridiculous moments on Birds are delivered with a completely straight face. On “through the late night,” he utters, “Relieve my heart of malice,” but offers no reason why that may be necessary. 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. 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.”
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. 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. “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 latter culminates with that effect turned into a beautiful glissando that cuts off abruptly. Better to do more with less than try to pack as many flourishes as possible onto one track.
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. 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. And when given too much time on the mic, Scott reverts to bad hashtag rapper. But when the verses are short, he offers, at the very least, intriguing bits of imagery: spending “a Sunday morning in a brothel,” or lacking cell “service in the mountains.” The scenes never materialize into anything, but they help decorate an album and keep the artificial stakes high and the energy up.
It’s also telling that each major guest highlights a key component that Scott lacks. André 3000, delivering a new trap flow, paints a vivid picture on “the ends.” Kendrick Lamar puts on a technical clinic, annunciating and shifting pitches on “goosebumps.” 21 Savage is plainspoken, straightforward, and fierce on “outside.” On “pick up the phone,” Quavo even delivers the titular “Birds in the Trap Sing Brian McKnight.” Despite even more vocal contributions from the Weeknd, Young Thug, Cassie, Kid Cudi, Swizz Beatz, Bryson Tiller, and others, Travis Scott remains at the center because he’s finally found his calling. He’s no longer a biter or an up-and-coming protege or an industry plant. He’s the rich and often ineffectual host of the party, overlooking the grounds from his dubious veranda, here to make sure everyone comes in and goes out looking and sounding spectacular. He has always been a mood-setter and a vocalist, and he is in full command of the vibe, tone, and mood of this entire project more than ever.
It’s a triumph that Travis Scott sources from different parts to turn Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight into his unified vision. The cover art (shot by Nick Knight) shows Scott as something between a bird, a fallen angel, and a video game character—his eyes pure white with plumes of equally white smoke rising above. It’s a ridiculous image to cover an album that includes a song called “beibs in the trap”—a misspelling of Justin Bieber as slang for cocaine—but that’s the point. Travis Scott repurposes conventional subjects and sounds, making them compelling with his panache. Like his mentor, he seems keenly aware of his place in the genre. At one point, he literally says, “Shout my tropes!” By and large, the whole record is about rampant drug abuse, yet he transcends the rote topic with how forcefully and pompously he indulges. Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight escapes as Travis Scott’s best work yet: a combination of elevated significance, self-awareness, and the old trick of spinning something so plain into something so luxurious.
