When it comes to presentation, Travis Scott is anything but complacent. Scott has begun a truly wild rollout for the release of Utopia, his long-awaited fourth solo studio album, which includes a July 28 performance at the pyramids of Giza, and the announcement of five distinct covers for the LP. At this point, Scott has been a ubiquitous cultural force and A-list pop star for the last five years at least, and topping the acclaim and career-defining success of 2018’s Astroworld will be no easy feat. Scott’s solution? To recapture the raucous feeling of his early records, when the Houstonian was still something of an enigma, co-signed by rap greats like T.I. and Kanye West, but carving out his own creative identity.
“Every time I listen to [Utopia], it just takes me back to the Rodeo days and the Owl Pharaoh days,” Scott told the crowd at Wireless Festival on July 8, referencing his first studio album and his first mixtape.. “It just takes me back to the motherfucking days where we used to just flip shit upside-motherfucking-down!”
We don’t have a terribly clear framework for what Utopia will sound like—save for a handful of loose singles, some (“Escape Room” “Mafia,”) better than others (“Highest in the Room,” “Franchise”) and leaked snippets of collaborations with Bad Bunny, James Blake, and Future—however, Scott released three clips to his Instagram teasing the themes of the project.
In “Houston,” footage of (presumably) a young Travis in choir practice plays while in narration, Scott talks about dreaming up worlds more expansive than his hometown. In “Miraval,” footage of Scott recording the album in France plays as he reveals that for Utopia, he’s refocused on making his own beats, a hallmark of his early work but something he went away from as he became a bigger star. And the most exciting clip is “Malibu,” which shows Scott in the lab with the legendary Rick Rubin actively working on a track (that we don’t hear), with Rubin enthusiastically praising the beat. It’s a mark of how far Travis has come—ten years ago Travis was an observer in Malibu watching Kanye and Rick finish Yeezus.
The superstar musician’s output has been scarce of late, likely in part a reaction to the Astroworld Festival crowd stampede that resulted in 10 deaths. (In late June, a Texas grand jury declined to pursue criminal charges against Scott for any potential role in what happened.)
In a June 2021 interview with Women’s Wear Daily, Scott teased an album that leaned into “psychedelic rock,” which he has explored in previous work alongside Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker. But that was more than two years ago, and since then many hip-hop artists have infused their music with kaleidoscopic guitars and woozy melodies, including Lil Yachty.
