Travis Scott in Rome on Monday, August 7th. A new chance to try and capture the 32-year-old Houston native, an elusive, elusive artist despite aggressive branding and 51 million Instagram followers despite a profile absolutely suited to the needs of this trap era focused on the most extreme marketing. Utopia, the new album released a week ago, “complicates” things even more: packed with features and produced by dozens of different hands, it offers a forward-thinking and almost avant-garde Scott, who so far does not help us. solve the problem. Riddle: Who is Travis Scott?
PCan an artist of this century broadcast like there’s no tomorrow, attracting both adoring crowds and audience acceptance? Anthony “Melon” Fantanoaffect every second teenager who tries to mess with Auto-Tune, but it turns out in spite of all this, mysterious? Don’t worry, we’re not talking about an absolute mystery, alla. burial. From Travis Scott – who will perform in Rome at the Circus Maximus on Monday, August 7to submit a new entry “Utopia” –, we know a lot (google what you want and satisfy your most lively curiosities). However, “explaining Travis Scott” can be tricky. Raised under the auspices Kanye WestScott in 2015 – when trap in the States was already “old news” – stamped “Rodeo”, an album that propels him into a new mainstream reality. As for the exciting sequel – a hit “Astroworld” (2018) and the tragedy of the Astroworld festival in New York, where ten people died, we refer you to dozens of web pages that outline the artist’s profile in a blurry, but no less mesmerizing or hypnotic way. Against.
WithWhat kind of music does Travis Scott write? Traps. Um, yes, thanks, but why does it sometimes sound “weird”? How many manufacturers have you collaborated with? A lot, maybe too much. How many features does it boast? Once again: a lot. What is his writing style? And then: rap, as God commands – how Freddie Gibbsto mention the first serious good guy that comes to mind – or is he muttering, albeit artistically? These are questions that, in theory, should puzzle beginners or those who have only ever fallen into the trap of Ge Pequeno he popped up with “Trinità” in 2017, and instead, these same questions may be on the minds of even a large section of those who would yell and swear at the Circus Maximus. Why? Why do new viewers shy away from the idea of ”analyzing” anything, including bits and pieces of their idol? Is it enough to “feel them inside”? Or because Scott embodies the archetype of the artist who creates his own transience – also read “chameleonic ability to ride the wave without pretending to do so” or “sly ability to lend an avant-garde aesthetic to graphic-friendly art” – his true style? The question is, maybe it is. When will you finally believe that Scott is something, instead of simplifying the question, it becomes more complicated. Top-notch branding is now the responsibility of anyone who has picked up a microphone over the past three decades to reach out to hundreds of thousands of fans/followers – Scott sells his alcoholic drink, cactiand link its image to McDonald’s. Um, is there anything complicated about all this? Not really, but maybe yes, if we pay attention to how Scott is a master of disorientation at heart. Because if selling a Big Mac might seem like too much of a lazy gimmick for one of the most evolved figures in the urban world, just as Scott carefully considers every art-musical move, ads for the most famous fast food restaurant of all time take over his ads. in a different sense. Movement that confuses and attracts. So who is Travis Scott? The creator of sometimes abstract poems – one might say, “crippling”, if not a deliberate trick – or a propagandist of a seen and spied way of life? Both that, and another at the same time. Type: I am one of you, but with me, into the night sausages and slanting choruses, you can vibrate at (un)known frequencies.
dTake a look at the list of features of the new – already controversial – “Utopia”, which was released just a week ago: Drake AND beyoncé on the front Super star, bad rabbit AND Weekend try to blow up multiple tables at the same time with “K-pop”, James Blake to add another name to the list titled “I didn’t expect Scott to collaborate.” Not to mention the producers: the forest, among the faithful comrades-in-arms (Mike Dean, WondaGurl. Ty Kit) and sensational novelties (in “Modern Jam” have a hand in one of two Daft Punk, Guy Manuel de Homem-Christo). Therefore, if trap, that trap that has now become a widely global sound, is still the hot point of Scott’s work, then everything that surrounds us and that innervates this center is something more smoky and at the same time visionary. So much so that in “Utopia”, an album already destined for future re-evaluation, Scott almost seems to be running away from himself while still trying to remain recognizable. You fall into a trap because you fall into it. But around him are more stylized 80s, a tune that looks like a music box, a piece in which Scott spins on himself, then stops and starts again, another piece in which the monotonous “la-la-la-la” of a small girls is buried under pitch-black lyrics, a psychedelic mishmash in which the Houston rapper seems to be trying to see what effect it will have. And we could go on and on Without giving you any extra references, we are also stoned, like good Travis, the one who Matthias Barrorecently from the columns rolling stone, he rightly called a “hallucination”. Commenting on the Milan date, he wrote: “Fashion, drop, collaboration, festival, Fortnite, Astroworld. We are talking about an artist who, even before the release of the fourth album, allows himself a tour of 80,000 people, exactly twice – to give you a proportion – of how much he brought Kendrick Lamar last year. To remind us how today the weight of an artist is increasingly measured by the breadth and brightness of the created universe, and not by the records themselves. To complete this layered and constantly “building” work, in which artist Scott is a performer, salesman, influencer and attentive admirer of his personality, there is now also Utopia. In which Scott adds artistic ambition, now in focus, now superbly eluding the commercial pretensions (always showing up). “Elusive”: for us Italians, affection for something feminine is plural. “Elusive” in English: elusive, obscure, elusive, elusive.