The Pop Corporation

2023 has been a lean year for big time, platinum plated releases, and with the fact that there’s been a sore lack of number ones for the most competitive genre on the planet (after all, hip hop is a contact sport), Travis Scott is here to generate the fuss.

And is there much fuss to be had?

Well, we were a little underwhelmed on initial listen of lead track ‘K-POP’ (which has improved a little as the days went on), so the rest of the album needed to bring some heat, or the year was looking like a bit of a long-player wash-out. The rapper must have felt some pressure, becoming a household name with some huge releases, featuring in the lives of the Kardashians, a tragedy at one of his shows and some nonsense with the pyramids in Egypt, this wasn’t ever going to be a drop like he’s had before.

If hip-hop was looking at him in years gone, now everybody was holding their breath.

Mercifully, Scott’s got the goods in some exchanges, although we’ll reserve ourselves to see if it matches ‘Birds In The Trap’ and ‘ASTROWORLD’. ‘Utopia’ kicks off with autotune free association before careering in with a thunderous breakbeat, and “yeah – okay – this shit is outta control”. It kicks off like a blockbuster rap LP, and in the first blows of the album, he’s in knucklehead mode especially on ‘HOOLIGAN MODE’ (is that a Daft Punk sample?) and later, ‘FE!N’ sounds like classic Travis.

However, the softer moments on the LP don’t hit like you’d hope. They’re not bad tracks – they’re just a little hollow. That said, the thing with Travis Scott is that he’s never going to dial it in and make Yet Another Rap Record and there’s a lot of big swings, and you have to appreciate that. The effort put into his records are always noticeable.

On ‘TELEKENISIS’, Future appears and does exactly what you want him to do, so too with SZA, echoing the bruised electronic soul of 6LACK, and Ye is on production in spiritual synth-mode – Scott, loyal to a mentor regardless of the bad press and divorce. Not a club track, it’s one of the stronger cuts for sure.

‘MY EYES’ is a lament that will remind you of Frank Ocean, which ain’t bad – it’s on the likes of ‘GOD’S COUNTRY’, ‘MELTDOWN’, and the 21 Savage featuring ‘TOPIA TWINS’ that we found ourselves just wanting a little more.

The sleekness is always there and it doesn’t feel like there’s a beat out of place, but tracks like ‘SKITZO’ pass you by without troubling the grey matter or the feet too much, which is a shame, because we’re rooting for Travis Scott because the stadium sized weirdness he can deliver is unmatched when he’s in full-flow. The track features Young Thug who, again, can really bend music out of shape in a magical way. It’s good, but we wanted greatness. Maybe that’s on us?

That said, who else on earth can just casually drop a track with a Beyoncé feature on it? With ‘DELRESTO’, a squirrelly digital drum machine sees Yoncé embracing her ‘Renaissance’ groove, while Scott appears in full zoned-out Xanax robo-drawl – it works well enough, and reeks of a grower over multiple listens, even if the thunderous drop never quite lands.

Fact is, this is a stacked album with some of music’s biggest names in tow – and the lead up may have contributed to some uncertainty as Scott sounds less sure-footed than he has in the past, but some reviews seemed like they’d half-written a kicking before pressing play, which sounds unfair to us based solely on what we listened to.

There’s eerie ambience, there’s huge ideas, there’s twists and turns but will ‘Utopia’ have the longevity of previous outings? Is this an album for Travis Scott to start finding his way again? We’ll have to wait and see, but overall, it feels good that there’s a huge project to listen to, dissect and marinade in.

Is it worth listening to? You bet it is. While some of Scott’s fury has been dialled back, and the reflectiveness upped, this might be the turning of a new page for him, and we don’t want musicians to sit still, so this is definitely worth your time as it perhaps points to a new Travis, moving away from ‘SICKO MODE’ and the like.