Utopia - Travis Scott

Utopia album cover, Travis Scott

Travis Scott’s iconic production and voice have cemented him as an icon in the modern hip hop landscape. With ASTROWORLD dropping back in 2018, UTOPIA has been a long awaited project. Originally slated to release in 2021, UTOPIA was delayed after the tragedies that took place at Scott’s Astroworld festival. Given the five year wait – and the controversy since his last album – fans and critics eagerly awaited UTOPIA to see what Travis would bring to the table next.

While UTOPIA’s production is on par with Travis’s previous releases, the album as a whole is bloated and meanders without reason. There is a heavy emphasis on returning to Travis’s darker, psychedelic aesthetic roots, yet his flows and bars sound recycled.

More specifically, the album lacks the cohesion of his past albums. ASTROWORLD worked so well because it was a continuous roller coaster from song to song, with surprising features and great transitions. UTOPIA feels more like a collection of songs Travis has been working on rather than a focused creative vision.

“MY EYES” and “K-POP” are especially egregious. While I love the last minute of “MY EYES,” where Travis has one of his best verses on the album, the first three minutes of the song see Travis recreating “Nikes” by Frank Ocean. I love Frank Ocean, but Travis isn’t Frank, and I just don’t like it. It sounds whiny. That's about all the explanation I can give. I know some people love this song, but I personally detest this awkward interlude before some of the best “classic” Travis content on the album that feels slightly new, and sees Travis in his stride. I don’t have as much to say about K-POP, as everyone I have heard talk about this album likes to pretend it doesn’t exist, which already says enough. Even so, while some songs did feel stale, tracks like “HYENA,” “I KNOW ?,” “LOST FOREVER,” and “TIL FURTHER NOTICE” see Travis and his collaborators deliver.

One review I saw claimed Travis producing three songs by himself was a demonstration of his versatility as an artist. Personally, I disagree. Many artists, from the underground and independent to the label-signed pop icons, often self-produce entire albums (JPEGMAFIA, Tyler, The Creator, clipping., BROCKHAMPTON, Childish Gambino, Bladee, Run The Jewels, Quadeca, Soul Glo, Quelle Chris, you get it). Production is a very different skill set from rapping, and Travis is certainly a talented producer; however, one of my main gripes with the album is the meandering production and the resulting lack of cohesion. When a producer is putting an album together, there is more at play than each song just sounding good. The best albums have thoughtfully ordered tracklists, consider which song will flow into which, and recognizes which part of the album will be most *exciting*.

Travis has production credits throughout the record, just like his previous albums, and Spotify actually attributes Travis with five solo production credits, more than the aforementioned three. In that case, Travis’s role in producing UTOPIA should have empowered him to better execute his vision and given him more control over the album. Many of the songs he produced are also some of the more jarring or exciting tracks on the album, but, while the variety they provide is… cool… the songs, again, feel like a collection of random tracks.

This brings us to another question: why does UTOPIA feel so different from his previous albums while sounding so similar? If his production skills are a testament to his versatility, why do so many of the songs already feel familiar?

UTOPIA is not a disappointing album because of the glaring issues with its songs, production, or other individual features. UTOPIA is disappointing because it sounds so similar to Rodeo. It sounds so similar to ASTROWORLD. It lacks identity, something that made those albums shine. ASTROWORLD’s wild switches, transitions, interludes, and ups and downs work because of the structure of the album and the context. UTOPIA has the same beat switches that deliver infectious choruses or verses, only before wanding off into nothing. The dark aesthetics that return from Rodeo and Birds In the Trap Sing McKnight are well developed and sound comfortable for Travis and his team of producers, but too many songs sound similar to each other or to past works for them to stand out on their own as anthems like “Antidote,” “Nightcrawler,” or “SICKO MODE” did.

UTOPIA is a bad album with lots of enjoyable songs, however, without the identity or coherence of ASTROWORLD or Rodeo, UTOPIA is unable to stand out among Travis’s catalog. The extended wait from ASTROWORLD to UTOPIA was also far too long for audiences to be celebrating this album left and right. Since UTOPIA has dropped, I have rarely, if ever, returned to the album as a whole. I still love a lot of Travis Scott’s older work, but UTOPIA was a flop, and it's up to listeners to be more critical of their favorite artists. Y’all deserve the best music – keep your favorites accountable – and use your power as a consumer to support artists you love rather than supporting the multi-platinum artists who have established themselves as titans in the music industry only to coast on their fame.

Side Note:

UTOPIA also includes a Ye production and writing credit for “TELEKINESIS,” something to keep in mind given how recently this album was released and Kanye’s current reputation. It is also worth mentioning Travis’s non-apology for the Astroworld Festival fiasco again and the fact that he continued to perform for thirty seven minutes after the event was officially deemed a mass tragedy; as he saw ambulances drive through the crowd, he told the audience “I want to see some rages. Who want to rage?” No one was indicted and no changes have been made to concert safety requirements. There are stories of nurses passing out, being carried to safety by loved ones, only to wake up next to a dead man with security guards pleading for help once they were informed she was a nurse.

Regardless of how you feel about Scott, defending his actions at the 2021 Astroworld Festival is abhorrent. The amount of failed oversight and cut corners in regards to safety are unforgivable. This was Travis’s festival. “Nobody wanted to tell Travis no, or that it was a bad idea to set up the festival with the stages like they were.” Travis appeared to have surrounded himself with “yes men,” Wallgren said, and it was difficult to convince him otherwise.”

Before defending Travis, remember that many of the lives lost could have been easily avoided. And that real people died. Just as a reputation update.