ince Travis Scott dropped his album “Astroworld”. Acclaimed to be one of his best pieces yet this 26-year-old rapper, producer, songwriter, fashion icon and entrepreneur has certainly made his mark on the music industry and continues to do so. Born Jacques Webster, this Houston native has released three studio albums to date, Astroworld being his third. Throughout his career he has touched multiple people with his music. Personally, his music has helped me with different aspects of my life and I can truly say that I have been a fan of him since his transcendent mixtape “Owl Pharaoh.”
Jacques Berman Webster II was born April 30th, 1992 in Houston, Texas. He lived with his grandma for most of his early life in Missouri City, Texas. Once he got older, he moved into the Houston suburbs to be with his mom and dad. There he would learn how to develop his musical background thanks to his father who bought him equipment to record music with. He stated in an interview “When I first came in I always made music to make it like other people.” He said he did this to learn how to craft the different sounds he uses today. He also said on many different occasions that his biggest musical influence growing up was Kid Cudi stating that “he saved my life with his music.” Travis Scott’s parents wished for their son to pursue a different career then music and sent him to the University of Texas. He later dropped out of college and moved himself to New York to chase after his true passion, music. He was finding it hard to gain traction in the industry in New York so he decided to move to Los Angeles, California. There he met Kanye West. Kanye took Travis under his wing after hearing his break through song “Love Sick.” Kanye West offered Travis Scott a feature on his album “Cruel Summer” which really spiked his career.
A few months after his feature on Kanye’s album, Travis Scott released his first mixtape “Owl Pharaoh.” Some songs that lifted him into fame even more off this mixtape included “Upper Echelon,” “Uptown Feat. A$AP Ferg,” and “Hell of a Night” totaling 23.6 million streams off of Soundcloud. Travis described that he included heavy baselines, and cutting-edge synths all over a dark somber vocal effect. He says he did this to fit the title of his project. His friends say that he named it after them calling him an owl since he likes the night time more than the day. This subtle detail will have an effect on the rest of his projects as this made him realize his true sound and theme of music: dark psychedelic music.
Following his remarkable release of “Owl Pharaoh” Travis Scott released his second mixtape “Days Before Rodeo.” This record truly demonstrated that he had an incredible talent in music producing. Alongside, critics reviewed the album extremely highly and brought light to Travis and put him on the center stage for his first studio album “Rodeo.” With songs like “3500,” “90210,” and “Antidote,” this album brought Travis Scott to the mainstream rap stage. At this point people began to realize how rowdy and wild his concerts were as well. His fans were literally jumping off balconies his concerts were so crazy. Along with these crazy concerts came legal troubles for Travis. In 2015, he was arrested and banned form a popular music festival in Chicago called Lollapalooza as well as being arrested in 2016 in Arkansas for inciting riots.
Later in 2016, Travis would release his second studio album “Birds in The Trap Sing McKnight” on September 2nd, 2016. On this project he would display beautiful discography with his 4-time platinum record “Goosebumps Feat. Kendrick Lamar” and a fantastic collaborative piece with Young Thug called “Pick Up the Phone.” He truly branched out and played with his sound freely on this project which created a more cinematic feel on his album. He would also beat Kanye’s record for most performances of the same song, performing “Goosebumps” 14 times at one of his concerts. He stated in an interview that he was so surprised anytime someone offered to be on his birds’ project explaining how Kendrick walked up to him at the VMA’s and said he would love to be on his newest album and thought that Rodeo was an amazing project.
After “Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight” Travis would take a short break from music in April of 2017 to focus on his relationship with reality star Kylie Jenner. Together, they would announce in September of 2017 that Kylie was pregnant with Travis Scott’s baby. After a long break without releasing anything, Travis Scott released his collaborative album “Huncho Jack, Jack Huncho.” This was an important piece for Travis Scott as he collaborated with Quavo from the popular rap group Migos. At the time Quavo and the Migos were among the hottest rappers on the charts after releasing their album “Culture 2”. Travis Scott fans were craving a new album from Travis and received a taste of what would come for Travis’ upcoming and highly anticipated album “Astroworld” on “Huncho Jack, Jack Huncho.” Shortly after the album was released Travis and Kylie had their baby Stormi Webster on February 1st, 2018. This was looked to be the height of Travis Scott’s career and he would only build off it more.
On August 3rd, 2018 Travis Scott would release his best album to date “Astroworld.” The project had been teased repeatedly since “Rodeo” in 2015. He had been hyping the album for what seemed to be ages in hopes of receiving a Grammy for his work after feeling he was snubbed for them in 2016. Astroworld was made to represent a theme park that was in Houston that Travis would go to as a kid. The project would present its depiction of a rollercoaster through the music with many beat switches and Travis Scott’s most uniquely distinctive lyrics yet. He included many different musical arrangements and a very randomized guest list consisting of people like Stevie Wonder, Drake, Frank Ocean, The Weeknd, John Mayer and Tame Impala. He truly strived for an album that locked you in and made you feel as if you were riding around on a rollercoaster. Astroworld would receive renowned feedback and spend 13 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 while also becoming certified platinum by the RIAA. It is currently ranked 9th on the chart. Along with a major release for Travis Scott he would be pronounced as the executive producer for NBA 2K19. Along with this he would dive farther into the fashion industry by doing a modeling shoot for GQ and other big-name magazines. He will also start his Astroworld tour this month as well as host an Astroworld Music Festival on November 17th.
Travis Scott has come from nothing and its truly incredible to see how he found his own sound, developed his own art and became famous off of it. It’s safe to say that Travis Scott will be around for years to come but critics wonder “What will he do next?” He is a person that develops his music and sound off of experiences in his life. It is likely that Travis Scott, no matter what he does, will be loved and praised for his next piece of work.
Critic Paper
The music industry has done nothing but gotten worse over the past few years. The state of music is in a very bad place right now as a new era of music has started to gain popularity. It is not the good old rock and jazz music, now its rap and hip-hop. Nothing was better than watching Jimi Hendrix strumming the guitar. Now it is people like Kodak Black and 6ix9ine driving the industry into the dirt. What really needs to happen is kids need to realize that the music they are listening to is not good. It pains me to see kids listening to this music that genuinely sounds like gibberish. They need to hear the rock and roll music like AC-DC and Queen that truly influenced people. There’s no way someone is able to get inspiration from the artist now a days. Instead, they are taking inspiration from people like XXXtentacion, 6ix9ine, and Kodak who have been accused of rape, pedophilia, and abuse. With the music industry going in this direction, the future does not look so bright. Future rappers and singers will take inspiration from these trash artists, and it is only going downhill from there. Back in the day, people would get inspired from good music such as Queen. Just recently they have had a movie made about them to illustrate just how important their music was to people. The movie is called Bohemian Rhapsody. The Beatles, one of the most unique groups to every be seen, now get criticized by the younger generation. It’s incredible how a child could even think about saying those words to older people when the have no artist to back up their music choice. To me, I can never see me listening to and enjoying any of today’s music so I’ll just have to stay back and listen to the music I like.
Reflection
The topic of music can be extremely creative as well as being controversial at the same time. Many people like different types of music and share different opinions. It seems as though the older generation likes more classic rock; music that was popular during their time. On the other hand, we have the younger generation that seems to like the new age hip-hop and rap music. Not saying that people from these generations can’t like different types of music it just seems as though that is the trend for these generations. With my biography on Travis Scott, we got to see his upbringing and achievements throughout his life. With my critic paper I attempted to share a different perspective on today’s pop music. Through these papers, we will see different rhetorical elements that I use throughout a lot of my writing.
In my biography, we followed a chronological path through Travis Scott’s life starting at his youth and going to present day. This organization style of chronological order makes sense for this writing as it highlights the important parts of his life and is easy to follow. It would not make sense to write it in a different style as it would just make his story confusing. My targeted audience for this paper was Travis Scott fans and/or people who would like to learn more about him. I picked a biography as it felt that it fit best for my purpose. It would not be effective to write an argumentative piece if all I wanted to do explain about Travis Scott’s life. I appealed to logos in this piece as I used factual information to grasp my audience’s attention such as his biggest musical influence growing up was Kid Cudi stating that “he saved my life with his music.” Using this appeal, it also made it very easy to write my paper, because I did not have to appeal to emotions or advertise my opinion. It was very easy for me to just specifically focus on Travis Scott’s background, music, and effect he has on others.
With my critic paper I made sure to appeal a lot more to pathos than I did in my biography. I targeted the younger audience in hopes to strike a more meaningful argument with my paper. I purposely dropped names like 6ix 9ine, Kodak Black, and XXXtentacion in an attempt to make the reader have an opinion on my paper. I realize that if fans of these artists read my paper then they will have an opinion to share because I mention some controversial topics such as 6ix 9ine being charged with rape and pedophilia. I also try and target the older crowd with talking about The Beatles and other rock artists. This paper was written to be a lot less proper. I wanted to make it seem like it may a paper you could find on the internet which explains the informal type of writing. My tone was purposefully aggressive because I know that it will strike up arguments with the audience. The content was specifically skewed so that the audience could clearly tell that I was bias towards new music. For example, I state “they are taking inspiration from people like XXXtentacion, 6ix9ine, and Kodak who have been accused of rape, pedophilia, and abuse.” What I think is unique about this particular paper is that it is not my actual opinion. I tried to write the paper using a different perspective so I could write from a different side. I actually somewhat like both XXXtentacion and Kodak Black because I feel they bring innovation to the industry. Everything that was said about 6ix 9ine was my genuine opinion. I truly believe that he is one of the worst things that could have happened for the industry because he advertises the wring ideas and is a horrible role model for the younger generation. After all being said, I wrote my critic paper to strike up arguments about today’s state of music to see if people would be willing to talk about how it could change or evolve whether it be a new genre or overhaul of the current sound of hip hop.
The rhetoric between both papers is vastly different. On one hand with my biography paper on Travis Scott where we take a formal more developed look into the life of this rapper. I touch on his music style and how he developed his style and became mainstream. I make sure to appeal to the audience’s logos using logical facts to captivate their attention. On the other hand, I have my critic paper that strikes up controversy and discussion on the idea of if the current state of music is in a good place or not. It appeals to emotion through pathos by creating argumentative statements. and captivates the audience into reading more about my opinion. It is unique in the way that it is not my genuine opinion and develops a conversation for the readers. Both papers discuss music in different lights, and bring light to the current state of mainstream music and the evolution of music through time.