Travis $cott - Days Before Rodeo

Travis Scott is culturally relevant because of how famous Kanye West is. Everything Kanye wears, everything he touches, everyone he meets, every musician whose music Kanye potentially, slightly enjoyed matters. Travis exists in this category. Once you remove this from the story, there isn't a lot left to get excited about.

Travis' history exists as follows: a Cruel Summer feature and a few Yeezus production credits. If his first mixtape Owl Pharoah solidified anything, it's that he really is an awful rapper. Take "Upper Echelon" for example, he raps like Shannon Sharpe does football highlights. His enunciation is muddled, his sentences are broken. Some words he used weren't even real words. You can legitimize his raps the same way you could trick yourself into thinking that Gudda Gudda's "got her nigga, grocery bag" line actually made sense, but ultimately nothing he says has much substance.

But hey, his beats are dope, right? Until you realize Owl Pharoah was almost entirely produced by other people, and his biggest production credit was someone else's beat. But the mixes are hot? It's safe to assume we can thank Anthony Kilhoffer and Mike Dean for that. Why were we supposed to like him again?

Days Before Rodeo is a step forward from the last project. Out of context, it honestly sounds good. Earlier this year, Travis helped out with A-Trak and Lex Luger's present day Atlanta-influenced Low Pros EP. Rodeo continues that Atlanta tradition. Featured heavily are some of the city's newest talents – Rich Homie Quan, Migos and Young Thug. Almost too obvious though is their influence on Travis' latest style. His autotuned delivery is literally an amalgamation of those three acts and also Chief Keef, Future and even Kanye. Not just stylistically but in terms of subject matter. There's all sorts of gun talk and drug talk here that we didn't hear on the last project.

The question becomes does the biting matter if the music is good enough? How do we judge something we're not supposed to like? Travis may have found his pocket vocally (the hook on "Don't Play" is great), but the mistakes are still there. Seriously, what the hell is he saying on "Skyfall?" His verse on "Sloppy Toppy" is like madlibs with phrases already heard on songs on the radio.

He's like Kirby, inhaling the talents of rappers that already made names for themselves but without it leading to any victories. Those other artists provide easy templates to trace, but he still has to fill in the rest of the picture and that's not something he's proven he can do. He's spent most of his career hiding his face, and maybe this is appropriate as the guy has no real identity.