For his sophomore album, Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight, Travis Scott really tries to forge his unique identity as an artist by trying to invent a new genre of music and make it all his own.
Travis pays homage to his mentor Kid Cudi by channeling the mindset of his album’s Man on the Moon and making Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight (or BITTSM), a social trap album, which is a niche genre spearheaded by Travis himself. This genre is all about “…what you want to do and how you want to express yourself.”
Travis really tries to push this album along that vein by making every song his, and by telling his story through his beats and vocals. At 14 songs, 53 minutes and 38 seconds of runtime, this album fails to establish a social connection due to its shortcomings in storytelling but it offers us a true glimpse into his life, and most importantly, his mind.
Its always a very difficult and subjective task to rate and talk about an album. BITTSM amplifies this problem, as I choose to believe Travis when he claims that this is the first album in the genre of “social trap.” To clarify, social trap keeps the instrumentals associated with trap: with its 808 kick drums, double time, hi-hats, strings, and the layered synthesizers but instead of everything being predominately barren with just the beats and lyrics front-and-center, it layers the basic beats with other beats that allow for a deeper flow with more complex under- and overtones.
So this album, if taken as a sample of what kind of music social trap will use as its inspiration, breaks down into three categories of music. There is first off the music you would bump in parties, it’s loud, it’s obnoxious and it absolutely gets you going.
The second broad category would be the type of music you play when chilling with your friends: It’s more relaxed, it’s flow is much smoother and it calmly plays in the background. The third type of music is love songs, the same cheesy stuff we all like. Half of the songs in the album consists of music that you would play when you’re trying to keep it low key and hang out with your friends. The next big chunk of the album consists of music that could be considered love songs and the remainder is music that could be bumped in frat row basements.
Is this album something amazing, worthy of deeper study and analysis? Probably not, but even at a surface level, this album offers us new insight into how Travis grew up, what his life was like and what he holds important.
If there is some small part of your body not infected with cynicism, believe Travis Scott for a second. Believe that he is forging a new genre, believe this album is just a glimpse of what this genre of music has to offer, and if nothing else, this album will keep your ears preoccupied for hopefully a couple of weeks until the hype surrounding the album dies, and something new comes out.
