Travis Scott’s Utopia is the most cinematic and forward-thinking release of 2023. For context, Utopia was created by a rapper at the top of his game as one of the most anticipated releases in rap music history, with 5 years between it and his last smash hit, Astroworld. I admit that I intend to use a lot of quotes to emphasize it as a rap record, and this one sums up the context best: last tape was filled up with slaps, guess gotta run this shit back.
Travis is writing to the perspective of a sexually and socially active college and urban population. His world is one which naturally ignores the tedium of his pre-fame life, or actually of any life slower than that of an excessive and hyperrealized urbanite. it’s 5am and i’m drunk right now, tell me can we still fuck , one of one i’m in the zone right now, etc.
Travis manages to maintain cohesion while taking his audience through a flurry of emotional and life extremes, jet skiing with twin models, getting erect because a bank wire just hit your account, and fiending for an unknown panacea. Indeed, this harmony of extremes is what gives this album the dark and emotionally vacant quality you see on its cover.
A deeper and perhaps Straussian reading of the album is that it actually glorifies the exact opposite of the vices it calls such attention to, making allusions to family, resilience, and hopeful, consensual love. There is a sample of his daughter Stormi after the line storms are minor but you know she’s living major. Dave Chappelle chants resoundingly
I forgive myself, I choose to feel good, I choose to feel free, I will fight for everything I love, forever
Even the song about being “Lost Forever” includes the line just one angel away from blocking out the devil.
Perhaps more interesting than the album itself is the questions it leaves in its wake: what does Travis strive for now that he has proven his ability to create a magnum opus and live off his brand completely if he wishes? is it even possible for Travis to compete with Drake, the first in line for the rap throne? what fantasies will grip Travis now that he has already reached his self-described utopia, what emotional frontier is there to exploit now that he has already reached the height of transcendence on a song like Sirens? what the hell is the point of having Justin Vernon collaborate with Beyonce if his only line is you will report to me over and over???
Beyonce-wise, it’s interesting to think of what the resounding echoes exactly are that Beyonce sees on echoes, just as it is interesting to consider the anecdote that gives the album its name, where a lady asks Travis why they ended up in Trav’s hotel room when she thought they were going to utopia, and he says it looks like utopia to him.
note: this post was partially made in response to Tyler Cowen’s albums of the year list, which notably excluded Utopia.