Artist: Death Grips
Album: Year of the Snitch
Label: Harvest Records
Release date: June 22, 2018
For fans of: Lil Ugly Mane
The return of the veteran experimental hip-hop group Death Grips comes just two years after their previous studio release, their fourth commercial record titled “Bottomless Pit”. This record came after their previous record “The Powers that B,” which through its eclectic Bjork samples and odd mixes of psychedelic rock and harsh noise ended on a song titled “Death Grips 2.0.”
What “Bottomless Pit” did was attempt to commercialize the abrasive sounds that Death Grips had been working with, while still forwarding their sound in an even more stringent showcase of obtuseness. And if this record was the ground that “Death Grips 2.0” was built from, their fifth album “Year of the Snitch” is the questionable skeleton of their musical abode.
Featuring genres like synth punk, glitch hop and electro-industrial, the California band — in their usual style — decided that sounds alone weren’t good enough. The album features collaborations from Tool bassist Justin Chancellor and Andrew Adamson, the director of motion picture classics Shrek and Shrek 2.
Producer Andy Morin, percussionist Zach Hill and lead vocalist MC Ride aren’t known to conventionalize their sounds, and the content of their most recent Death Grips record encapsulates this idea.
From the intro track “Death Grips Is Online” to the closer “Disappointed,” the already penned style of Grips and Co. is utilized against a more cybernetic, futuristic sound of production — assisted on all 13 tracks with deck scratching by DJ Swamp. Their dissonant blend of noise and rap is meshed with styles they had experimented with before on prior releases.
Take for example the sludge-metal harmonies on “Black Paint.” Yet, parrying this sound is the key to why this record exists within their discography as a standalone record.
Odd songs like “Linda’s In Custody” or “The Fear” strengthen Death Grips’ repertoire of being “that” weird band, the band that could layer breakbeat 808 snares against cute synth bleeps or free-jazz piano underneath monotone versed poetry. Where “Year of the Snitch” stands as a record is to cement their avant-garde status, where the only directions to go now could be a whiplashing spin into pop or a head rushing charge into further sonic obscurity.
While tracks like “Streaky” and “Flies” continue Death Grips’ typical blend of discordant electronics and quickly spit rap verses, the contextual bulk of “Year of the Snitch” seems like its creation is to further solidify the group’s position as the progressive hip-hop band.
Rating: 4.5/5
Artist: Travis Scott
Album: ASTROWORLD
Label: Epic Records
Release date: August 3, 2018
For fans of: Kanye West
Finding himself amid a shaky relationship with Kylie Jenner and riding the cultural wave of his last two records, Travis Scott had been queued up to hit a homerun with his fourth studio release, “ASTROWORLD.” The title of the record was released in May 2016, a fingerful of months away from his follow-up record “Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight.” What “Birds” followed up was Cactus Jack’s debut stunner, “Rodeo,” or at least it attempted to follow it up.
The importance of “ASTROWORLD’s” release after two years of hype is not one to be downplayed, because in the downtime between “Rodeo” and “Birds,” many fans wanted Scott to continue in the diversely curated list of collaborators and ideas that his debut album consisted of so numerously.
ASTROWORLD isn’t completely missing what fans had been wanting out of the name. The amusement park concept is explored quite voraciously in the scene-setting of the album. Songs like “STARGAZING” or “SICKO MODE” begin ideas and create interesting musical interludes while transitioning sections of songs, calling back to the multi-part tracks of “Rodeo” like “90210” and “Wasted.”
Artists like James Blake, 21 Savage and Drake pop up in the mix but are more like a free ride ticket you find on the ground rather than the ride you came to get on, with Scott’s predictable vocalizations and ad-libs still running amok.
A key track is “STOP TRYING TO BE GOD,” a grandiose cataclysm of reverb, harmonicas, atmospheric trap autotune croons and what sounds like Kid Cudi-sampled moans. In comparison to many of the formulaic bangers on “Birds,” this song fuses Scott’s key attributes that ignited his fame with his keen ear for variance and interesting production.
This is the best factor of “ASTROWORLD” by far, and with producers like TM88, Boi-1da, Thundercat, John Mayer and Kevin Parker of Tame Impala, this album would be hard-pressed to not sound good or sound boring. The beats, rhythms, soundscapes and instrumentals alone are some of Travis’s strongest.
Sitting at 17 songs, “ASTROWORLD” is sure to be one of Travis Scott’s discographic highlights, but like a carnival with too much to see in too small of a venue, the final product wouldn’t have hurt from a few cut tracks and a more focused construction. From the monotonous earworm “NO BYSTANDERS” to the quiet Nav feature on “YOSEMITE,” the Houston dynamo is continuing his artistic revitalization of the trap genre while still making the same mistakes that plagued his work from the start.
Rating: 3.5/5
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