Steadily becoming one of the leaders rising to the top of the new class of alternative rock and pop punk-influenced emo rap artists, Trippie Redd’s debut studio album is a melancholy, raw project framed by Redd’s unique, strained and distressed vocal delivery. He references Lil Wayne’s music on the project, and he comes across here as the most obvious offspring of Wayne’s ill-conceived but undoubtedly influential 2010 rock album, Rebirth. Ultimately, Redd’s vocal delivery verges on painful to listen to, and his ridiculous lyricism and meandering, directionless moody emo-trap song structures greatly let down the novelty of the act that he is.

Trippie Redd is often lauded for his lack of Auto-Tune usage, unlike his contemporaries in the genre, simply presenting his raw, unfiltered vocals that supposedly better express the darker thoughts that pop up in the new landscape of hip-hop. This would be a perfectly appropriate comment if Redd’s vocals weren’t so hard to listen to – Redd seems to take this too far, straining his vocals and every so often extending a note too far with a garbled scream. Young Thug’s worst tendencies are right at home on this album, appearing on the track “Forever Ever”. The two each throw their voice around with reckless abandon, forgetting that a concrete musical rhythm and structure exists for a reason. The songs on the project that extend past the usual 2 or so minutes that most Soundcloud rapper adhere to feel completely self-indulgent, Redd repeating the same refrains without a hint of a memorable, catchy melody as he runs up and down the scales completely off-key.

It really does feel like all of these songs are freestyles at times, like he goes into the booth without an idea of what’s going to happen. The track “Bird Sh*t” sees him suddenly latching onto a single musical phrase in the middle of a verse and repeating it, seemingly just because it fit his liking in the moment regardless of how it worked with the rest of the song. Longer tracks “BANG!” and “How You Feel” are even more excruciating, Redd singing the entire chorus with his strained, yelling vocal on a song that extends to nearly 5 minutes on the former and sounding completely out of place on the guitar instrumental on the latter. It’s a few guitar chords that simply loop for 4 and a half minutes, accompanied by a higher-pitched wail in the background and Trippie repeating the title in his often pitchier higher register seemingly emulating a rock n roll frontman, occasionally breaking the cycle to offer a ridiculous lyrical simile or absurd melodramatic proclamation. Travis Scott-featuring single “Dark Knight Dummo” goes the other way, the beat a complete sensory overload that tries to do too much, and the only thing that could draw attention from the instrumental is of course the same strained vocal on top of all of the background mess.

Redd does attract some great collaborators to this project, and at times you can see some good songs hiding underneath all of the mess coming from Redd himself – the legendary Scott Storch lends a catchy, poppier instrumental to the track “Taking A Walk”, which is over too quickly and is let down by Redd’s vocals, for example. Sometimes, the good song is literally hiding underneath – Redd adds the Diplo collaboration “Wish” to the tracklist with a new “Trippie Mix”, after he expressed his disdain with the changes Diplo made to the song on his own project. Turns out, Diplo simply removed all of Redd’s terrible ideas and turned it into an enjoyable song. Redd reinserts a delayed echo affect that throws off the melody and some awful harmonized vocals completely out of sync with the rest of the song that left me shaking my head in disbelief at how passionately he felt about such incompetence.

Redd’s rap tracks do fare slightly better, especially “Oomps Revenge”, where he clears up his voice and raps over a great chopped up soul sample – he kind of sounds like Chance the Rapper. “Missing My Idols” had potential, but his apparent thought process that an obnoxious vocal delivery means clearer expression of self reappears even here and he loses the rhythm a bit in the second half of the song extending his words too far and raising his voice.

After pioneer XXXTENTACION’s death, I can only see this style continuing to grow and prosper – there’s evidently something about it that does succeed at drawing people in. Whatever it is, I personally have no idea how to relate to or understand it.

Favourite Tracks: Oomps Revenge, Taking A Walk

Least Favourite Track: Gore

Score: 2/10