Travis Scott is a premier artist. When your that good at making music, your fanbase can become rather impatient. We have been spoiled with two excellent projects in the last two years with 2015’s Rodeo and 2016’s Birds in the Trap Sing Mcknight. Since early 2017, Travis Scott fans haven’t had to question what’s next on the list. The Houston native announced his new album, Astroworld, and his heavily anticipated album with Migos member Quavo.
Despite those two projects having yet to see the light of day, Travis Scott hasn’t flown off of anyone’s radar this year. He has had somewhat of a myriad of featured vocals; racking up accolades by enhancing tracks with his unique sound. He started his own record label, Cactus Jack, and signed its first artist. Scott has also released a handful of songs this year with “Butterfly Effect” reaching platinum status.
In the anticipation of either of his loosely scheduled projects being released, Scott has certainly kept his voice heard. As of right now, Scott has placed vocals on 17 songs this year. The rapper has a feature on 11 released albums including being vocally involved on 4 songs in DJ Khaled’s Grateful. For artists of Travis Scott’s stature, it is common for them to drop an album then take two or three years off. It’s been made clear by his nonstop work ethic that he desires no part of this practice. He continues to show the value of intertwining consistency with quality.
Take the smash hit Love Galore for example. It’s SZA’s first platinum record and it surely a reward for her tremendous talent and songwriting skill, but much credit must go to Travis Scott. Rappers have a knack for ruining R&B tracks either by going off topic or disregarding the melody. Melodius rappers like Scott himself had zero problems assisting TDE’s songstress and enhancing the record to its peak potential.He is helping usher in a new wave of rappers that care about making a song sound as sonically pleasing as it should.
Travis Scott’s sound seems to travel all over the place. Recently, he made a song with Kris Wu, a former member of the Korean-Chinese pop supergroup, EXO. Wu disbanded from the group to begin his solo career with Travis Scott being his choice or his label’s choice to assist him on his new song, “Deserve.” Wu is Chinese-Canadian and was already popular in the U.S. due to EXO fame, but this song should definitely add to his appeal as a solo artist. With the instant hitmaker Travis Scott is known to be, having him on the track should pay dividends in the future.
Travis Scott has been making executive moves this year as well. Smokepurpp is a rapper from Florida who built his equity on SoundCloud. In March, he signed a deal with Alamo Records under Universal Music Group. Later this year in September he dropped his mixtape Deadstar to critical appeal. Smokepurpp’s success and impact were hard to ignore, which led to Travis Scott signing him to his label, Cactus Jack. It wasn’t a coincidence that Scott was featured on “Fingers Blue,” a highlight from Deadstar.
Another good reason for him not dropping any project this year is him being placed on the first leg of Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. tour. Scott is known for his energetic, ambitious performaces, but on the tour he decided to get especially creative. The highlight of his performance was when he performed on a huge animatronic bird.
With all of things happening, Scott still managed to devote time to himself. There was moment this year when he released a triad of solo work on his Soundcloud; one song ending up being a platinum single (“Butterfly Effect.”) It’s obvious that Travis Scott sincerly cares about his fans, yet fans always are somewhat impatient and feel betrayed whn you break promises. Still, Whenever Travis Scott decides to release Astroworld or the Quavo collab album will be a day to celebrate.
Here are some highlights from 2017 so far: