UTOPIA – Travis Scott ★★½

Year	Album	Artist	Stars	Score	Genre
2023	UTOPIA	Travis Scott	★★½	50	Hip-Hop

A really appealing aspect of listening to Travis Scott albums for the first time is that he doesn’t note who his guest features are on the tracks when you listen on streaming. It makes the experience a journey, because you don’t know who is going to pop up where, who had their hands in the production and how the album’s going to move. Because of this, I thought it would be fun to jotted down my instant reactions going through UTOPIA for the first time. 

If you want to just skip on to the more traditional review, scroll past the (very long) track-by-track rundown. Otherwise, here’s how it felt going through an interesting, sometimes enjoyable, sometimes cool but also frequently perplexing first listen.  

HYAENA

• Pretty safe to say this is the worst opening track on a Travis Scott record to date. The vocal intro is a little weird,  and the “Rest My Chemistry”/“Float On” sounding guitar chords don’t really do anything for me. It’s a fine song but a little weird. 

THANK GOD

• Ok, so far this sounds a lot more Kanye than I expected and a lot less Travis Scott. 
• Cool sounding song. The uneven beat switches, the different style synths and horns make the song work. 

MODERN JAM

• “This is how we do it!”
• Except, maybe not because this song stinks.
• What is that guest verse? Not good. (Apparently it’s Teezo Touchdown.) 
• There sounds like there’s a dying cat in the background fading in and out. 

MY EYES 

• Justin Vernon time! This song feels very 2016, like “White Ferrari” on Blonde or the  Vernon/James Blake collaboration “I Need a Forest Fire”
• And Sampha (briefly)! 
• We’ve got a cool beat switch too. This song is great! It’s a little out of place this early on the record but it’s really really good. Early contender for best track.  

GOD’S COUNTRY 

• We’re back to a darker, more traditional Travis Scott sound, but it’s really boring and undynamic. It definitely feels like a Donda B-Side.  

SIRENS

• That vocal intro and the drums early feel like a Danger Mouse sample flip. 
• A non-autotuned song with a pretty hollow beat. It could have used more frantic energy or bass to kick it up to a higher gear.   
• Was that a clip of the Weeknd talking in “The Idol” at the end? (Nope, it turns out it’s just Drake being weird.)

MELTDOWN

• And here’s the Drake verse. It’s not a good Drake verse and this beat is really lazy. 
• The synths and horns before Travis comes in makes the song feel a bit more like a Travis Scott song. I don’t know why we have the Star Wars blasters/seagull noises in the background though. 
• And we get a beat switch! The back half of the song’s better and Travis sounds good, but it ain’t “Sicko Mode”

FE!N

• Uhoh, this synth intro sounds just like “Just Wanna Rock.”
• And that sounds like Playboi Carti squawking. He’s definitely trying to coast on the Lil Uzi Vert “get hype” stadium aesthetic here. 
• I honestly can’t tell who’s who on this song. The energy is fun but that last verse by Carti (I think?) is rough. And it sounds like they’re saying “fiend” but the song is called “Fe!n” so I’m not sure what’s going on.
• There’s not much substance here. I love “Just Want to Rock,” and there’s literally no substance to that song so I shouldn’t criticize this one really, but it just isn’t as hype. That said, the synths and bass feel a lot more intense and makes me realize how much it’s been missing on this early part of the album. WHERE’S THE ENERGY ON THE ALBUM? 

DELRESTO (ECHOES)

• Ahh, this is the Beyonce song that came out a few hours before the record dropped. 
• There are some odd vocal effects here, but it’s a pretty cool song. Dancy, but not really a dance track, and it has a nice, kind of dark groove to it. I wish it was either a little more energetic or a little more mysterious, but I think it works. 
• Justin Vernon again! What a treat. I don’t think he’s ever been on a song with Beyonce before. 
• Travis Scott comes in for the first time 1:53 into the song. 
• I was NOT expecting a “Coldest Winter” interpolation on this album. That caught me off guard but was instantly recognizable. Nice arpeggiating synth part during Travis’s verse too. 
• The Travis Scott portion of the song is fine, but now we’re back to Beyonce and Justin, and this section is just better. The song’s building nicely. 
• Travis Scott is hardly in this song, but the whole package works and it’s probably the second best song I’ve heard on the record so far. 

I KNOW ?

• The lullaby/music box piano, the darker auto tuned vocals and the adlibs. Now this sounds like a Travis Scott song. It’s an average Travis Scott song, but this is what I came to the album expecting to hear more of. This really is only the second song to capture that other than track 2. 

TOPIA TWINS

• This song is bad. Very bad. “Twin bitches” is cringe to the most extreme level,  and that opening verse is tough to get through. I don’t actually know who it is.
• 21 Savage tries his best to save the song. He doesn’t miss as a featured artist.
• The second Travis Scott verse isn’t that bad, but that chorus is still rough.  

CIRCUS MAXIMUS

• I don’t get these vocal intros that Travis has on the album. They feel random. 
• I know this can’t be a “Black Skinhead” sample, but it’s just about the closest thing you could get to a “Black Skinhead” sample. And those synth horns make it sound like it’s trying to be “N95.” 
• The Weeknd brings it up a level at the chorus. 
• I’m not sure what he and Beyonce are talking about with the “echos” imagery on this album, but it’s there. 
• The synths mixed with that drum beat make the song feel more like a Weeknd pop/dance track than  a hip-hop song, but Travis does add some edge. Even if it’s a knockoff, modernized Yeezus song I dig it. This was a fun one. 

PARASAIL 

• A slower, softer song that reminds me a little of the Frank Ocean aesthetic. Kind of random but it’s not bad. 

SKITZO

• A pretty standard Young Thug feature. 
• I like the bass here leading up to the beat switch, and the second half sounds solid.
• This song was fine but didn’t have to be 6 minutes long, even  with the multiple beat  changes. 

LOST FOREVER

• Boo-boo-boo-boo-boom! Gotta love Westside Gunn and James Blake. 
• The production is glitchy and messy but the song works.

LOOOVE

• Another upbeat dance floor song. It’s weird because it’s definitely a dance song but it’s not that energetic (apparently that’s a recurring theme on this album). I can’t imagine someone jumping out of their seat to dance if this one came on at a party, but I think that’s what they’re going for.  
• Travis sounds a lot like Kanye here, as do the sound effects. It’s kind of like “Fade” on The Life of Pablo. 
• Finally, we get Kid Cudi. It doesn’t feel like a Travis Scott album without him. 
• It’s good but the song feels a little basic overall. 

K-POP 

• The Bad Bunny single featuring the Weeknd is pretty good. It doesn’t feel like a Travis Scott song, although he’s done lighter songs like “Pick Up The Phone” and “Sweet” before. 
• This song’s fun. I like the Weeknd. 

TELEKINESIS

• I think that’s Future. Yup, it sure is! 
• And that’s SZA. What a nice climax at the end of the song with those pulsing “Lift Off” horns. If last year Travis Scott traded one feature on SZA’s album to get her to return the favor here, it definitely paid off, because she really steals the show.  
• The production here feels a lot more textured than the rest of the album has. It’s still not as ominous as Travis Scott’s other records but it’s a nice sound with the horns, the rumbling bass and the strings.  

TIL FURTHER NOTICE

• Here’s a really nice James Blake sample flip and feature with the Metro Boomin drum programing. A nice, smooth beat that’s perfect for a Travis Scott record. Where was this on the rest of the album? 
• That “Alright,  alright, alright…” sample is kind of overdone at this point, and feels just thrown on top of an otherwise really cool sounding track. It doesn’t ruin the track but is an example of a lot of rogue noises scattered throughout the album. 
• 21 Savage again, and he’s really bringing it. 
• This is a really nice final track, and the back third of the record kind of turned my feelings on it around a bit. 

Overall, UTOPIA is a fine album that has some cool highs (“MY EYES,” “DELRESTO (ECHOES),” “CIRCUS MAXIMUS,”  “LOST FOREVER,” “LOOOVE,” “K-POP,” “TELEKINESIS” and “TIL FURTHER NOTICE”), some pretty lame lows (“MODERN JAM,”  “GOD’S COUNTRY,”  “SIRENS” and “TOPIA TWINS”) and a lot of in between songs that you could take or leave. Usually,  if you come away from an album liking eight tracks it’s a positive experience, but at 19 songs long and about 1:15 in length, the album definitely could have used a trim.

What this album lacks is the cohesiveness that pulls all three of Travis Scott’s other records together. I listen to Travis Scott because of the layered production, the haunting synths, the dark, thundering bass notes that overwhelm at times and show off his attention to detail at others. The occasional summer pop tracks work great when juxtaposed to the more serious, epic and sinister sounds. But most importantly, Travis Scott’s voice — auto tuned, heavy, present and attention grabbing — works like an instrument that can’t be replicated elsewhere. 

Take those synthetic elements in the vocals and production out of the equation, and Travis Scott gets hung out to dry. His vocal contributions to UTOPIA are an afterthought, and he consistently gets overshadowed by his guest stars. 

The whole package feels like it’s missing that key element that makes a Travis Scott album sound and feel like Travis Scott. Even if the dance songs are solid, I didn’t come to dance. I don’t want Travis Scott to pass on wisdom or sick lines. I want to feel like I’m being buried under the weight of synths or sneaking out a window in the middle of the night.

The thing I kept thinking about while going through this album was Yeezus (as well as Donda to a lesser extent because of its modern influences), which makes some sense. Travis Scott had a hand in creating that record’s sound; you could feel his influence everywhere. But Utopia adopts some of Yeezus’ shortcomings and leaves behind a lot of the experimentation that made the 2013 album interesting. 

Some of the booming drums he adopted from “Black Skinheads,” the Bon Iver/Kid Cudi backing vocals, even the Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo production are welcome. But he also takes some of the noisier elements, like blaring horns, weird vocal samples and static electronics that sound intentionally grating on Yeezus but haphazardly scattered and out of place here. It makes the whole album feel disjointed and uneasy, even though the songs aren’t too complex overall. 

To me, Yeezus also marked the start of the decline of Kanye West as a lyricist. Sure, he always had some corny lines, but they were clever or creative or fun. On Yeezus, a lot of his punchlines started to be too comedic or reliant on,  while most of the attempts at thoughtful moments end up building by not landing (“Unholy matrimony,” as the payoff line after the buildup on “Blood on the Leaves” always comes to mind). 

Travis Scott has never been a standout lyricist, so I don’t go into his records expecting greatness or enlightenment. But — going back to that idea of his vocals being used more as an instrument than a messenger — by using auto tune a lot less and not having that dark, booming layer of sound, it really takes away the grandness of his style. The natural, unaltered voice makes you focus a little more on the lyrics, which isn’t exactly a strength. 

It’s a shame there’s so much I can say to criticize UTOPIA, because some of the good moments really are good. I wish there was more “TELEKINESIS” and  “TIL FURTHER NOTICE” and less generic “SIRENS” sounding tracks.