Mr. Scott at The Schott
The long rollout for Mr. Webster’s fourth album has had its ups and downs, but after a few gravely unfortunate delays… we finally arrived at UTOPIA.
A few weeks before the controversial Grammy snub for Best Rap Album, Travis Scott touched down at the Schottenstein Center to give us a glimpse into his vision of utopia. Personally, while I enjoy UTOPIA more, I would argue that the loss wasn’t that much of a snub. I would say that as a rap album, Killer Mike’s MICHAEL succeeds more since it has more memorable, meaningful, and skillful bars throughout. Even Twitter La Flame fans advocating for his first Grammy win pretty much unanimously agree that the rapping is rarely a highlight in his work—with the exception of “MY EYES” and “LOST FOREVER.” (However, considering the fact that Tyler, the Creator’s experimental pink macabre neo-soul classic IGOR won Best Rap Album in 2020 despite the dearth of rap verses, I doubt that was the Academy’s reasoning.) Travis Scott’s biggest virtue has always been his aptitude for crafting soundscapes and evoking *circus* maximal energy for live settings. Consequently, going in with prized floor tickets to Travis’s dark fantasy world, I was excited to experience UTOPIA the way it was meant to be heard.
After being censured all throughout childhood for rough playing and diving into my fair share of mosh pits, I was confident I was adequately prepared for Utopia, but I was bleeding 30 seconds into the industrial crash-landing “HYAENAS.” I’d been instantly isekai’d to a parallel dimension where it was every man for himself—ornate with gargantuan bobbing heads hovering in the sky carrying willing passengers, fizzling pyrotechnics, and fiery streams painting the scene like the spittle of a reptilian wyvern. Utopia immediately forced me to evolve if I wanted to make it out alive. After being habituated to the new frontier, I fared better during follow-up “THANK GOD” but was promptly swallowed by bodies and 808s so deep I could feel my uvula shaking during his rendition of Lil Uzi Vert’s “Aye.” I stood my ground for the next few songs, impressed by the variety of the setlist—showcasing songs from his Owl Pharaoh days for the Day #1 fans and radio hits like “HIGHEST IN THE ROOM” AND “BUTTERFLY EFFECT.” In the first half of the concert, “MY EYES” shined as a borderline holy experience.
Following his costume change during “DELRESTO,” the concert power-scaled up, but by then I’d had the character development to handle whatever utopia threw at me. “MELTDOWN”—“Aye”’s long lost twin sibling of a song—especially was a turbulent tsunami of viscous sound and modular phases. The rage notwithstanding, compassion still glimmered in the audience as other attendees picked up fallen moshers and avoided stepping on lost glasses. However, the boss battle of the night was the infamous “FE!N” and its seven barbaric rounds. The track proved itself to be the climax of the night, as I essentially performed tribal war dances and charged my chi with guttural screams to adequately prepare myself for each bout with swarming, flying elbows and sharp jewelry.
Throughout Travis Scott’s career, my most consistent complaint has been that his projects often struggle to stick to their theme. 2015’s Rodeo starts as a hero’s journey about defying the odds and beating stereotypes but mostly is an album about partying and drugs. ASTROWORLD has the carnival aesthetic but doesn’t commit outside of “CAROUSEL.” UTOPIA as well kind of fails to commit to following Travis on his journey to find utopia outside of Drake’s outro on “SIRENS,” the seeming epiphany on “TELEKINESIS,” and empty religious references sprinkled throughout. However, experiencing the songs live helped me comprehend it as an amusement park theme rather than a concept album premise. After everything, I’m happy to boast Travis Scott as my first stadium concert experience and hope he carries the nebulous lessons with him into his future music.