Album Review: Travi$ Scott-Birds in the Trap Sing Brian McKnight

While not quite matching Future's superhuman output, Travi$ Scott has displayed one of the strongest ethics in all of hip-hop over the past year. Scott broadened his audience by landing opening slots on U.S. tours with The Weeknd and Rihanna and high-profile guest spots on tracks by Justin Bieber and Miguel while simultaneously hitting the studio to work on new material. Just shy of a year after releasing his debut album Rodeo, Scott has dropped his sophomore LP Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight, which marks a huge improvement over its top-heavy predecessor.

Birds in the Trap Sing Brian McKnight manages to solve just about every problem that plagued Scott's releases up to this point. The inconsistent, tonally-jarring MC that was found on 2013's Owl Pharaoh, 2014's Days Before Rodeo and last year's Rodeo has been replaced by one with a strong, fully-realized vision and a striking amount of confidence in his art.

Scott set out for Birds to be a sprawling, trippy musical journey and by god, does he accomplish that goal. The dark, dream-like production fully immerses the listener in Scott's world of debauchery, depression and womanizing and remains impressive throughout despite only a couple of detours (the pop rap anthem "Pick Up the Phone" and R&B slow jam "First Take") from the record's melancholy  tone. The quality of the production also raises Scott's rapping to the next level. Songs like "Outside", "Sweet Sweet" and "Way Back" see Scott delivering some of his most assured and technically-impressive performances on the mic to-date. It could be argued that Birds is heavily indebted to Kid Cudi's Man on the Moon-era material (Cudi himself appears on the party banger "Through the Late Night and Scott recently admitted that he is his top musical inspiration), but Scott's raw edge and newly-developed flare for consistency is more than enough to distinguish him from his idol and make this album a unique, enthralling listening experience.

Just like on Rodeo, Birds is bolstered by Scott's ability to get a bunch of excellent guest spots from high-profile artists in the hip-hop and R&B community. Every single person that appears on this record fully understands and perfectly complements Scott's gleefully strange, psychedelic vision. While the features here are collectively impressive, Kendrick Lamar's boastful verse on "Goosebumps" and Andre 3000's high-energy spazzout on album opener "The Ends" in particular left me in a state of pure hip-hop geek nirvana. Guest spots can often be the kiss of death that derails otherwise promising hip-hop albums (Riff Raff's Peach Panther, both of Big K.R.I.T.'s albums), but Birds is one of the rare times where all of the features feel necessary and truly add something to the album on the whole.

Birds in the Trap Sing Brian McKnight is the album that Travi$ Scott needed to make at point of his career. All of the promise he teased on his first three projects has finally materialized into an album that is interesting, atmospheric and catchy as all hell. I have no idea what the cause of it was, but it's great to see someone grow so much as an artist in so little time. Birds is a successful first chapter in the new era of La Flame and one of the clear standouts in a pretty mediocre year for hip-hop overall.
  
4/5 Stars
Standout Tracks
1.Pick Up the Phone (feat. Young Thug and Quavo)
2.Goosebumps (feat. Kendrick Lamar)
3.Sweet Sweet