Trippie Redd's "Trip at Knight"

 

                Hey guys what’s up! It’s been a while since I’ve done another album chat but here we are with a brand new Trippie Redd album. I reviewed the last album Trippie released which was the gigantic, double-stacked album “Pegasus: Neon Shark vs Pegasus Presented by Travis Barker (Deluxe)”. While in theory this sounded like a cool concept, I don’t think it had the effect it could’ve had due to the huge track list of 40 songs that didn’t seem to take Trippie anywhere past his album before that. If anything, this album seemed to be a platform where Trippie was able to experiment with a lot of different sounds and give his take on the rap/rock hybrid genre we see now through artists like City Morgue, Machine Gun Kelly, and of course Travis Barker. At the end of it, I just didn’t think it was a memorable album. At that point, I was worried that maybe Trippie Redd was going to lose his place in the evolving rap culture we see today and eventually phase out as another artist that didn’t make it past the Soundcloud era. TLDR: Fortunately, Trippie Redd does show some consistency while showing off his fun side in his new album “Trip at Knight”.

                The album starts off with “Molly Hearts”, which I thought was a simple yet classic Trippie Redd song. The beat is jumpy, the lyrics seem to reflect the energy of the song, and it honestly presented what seemed like a much more composed Trippie Redd. The third song “Finish Line” was where I noticed the consistency mentioned before. This song just reminded me of Trippie Redd being in his element with his moody lyrics and backdrop singing on a beat that makes him look cool overall. The fifth song, “Super Cell” was where I was starting to notice the musical cohesion of the project. This song was fun to listen to, and at this point I started seeing a trend on the type of beats Trippie was rapping on. Each song on this project follows a very synth heavy beat that seems to take inspiration from a lot of sounds that personally reminds me of arcade games. I’ve seen TikToks that have compared these sounds to those from the fun yet annoyingly hard game “Geometry Dash”. While this sound can be annoying for others, I found it pretty refreshing hearing a Trippie that was able to bounce off such a charismatic sound with his voice. Sure, there were some songs that sounded very similar, but this project came to me as one that reeled Trippie back to an area of music where he can effortlessly show off his charisma as a rapper. “Pegasus: Neon Shark vs Pegasus Presented by Travis Barker (Deluxe)” was a huge project that contained a lot of different and unique sounds. Whether they were good or bad, we know that Trippie Redd is down to experiment with different sounds so I don’t mind having the experimentation be left out of this album. This, to me, was the other side of the coin and I’m very much pleased knowing that Trippie isn’t afraid of sticking with one lane to show that he’s having fun even during a pandemic. Where it may have felt a little dry, we’re given features that enhance the lyrical style of the Ohio rapper. Songs like “Miss the Rage”, “Matt Hardy 999”, “Danny Phantom”, “Rich MF”, and “Captain Crunch” are my personal favorite examples where you can see this.

                Overall, this project came as a blessing in disguise for me on how I looked at Trippie Redd. While I can see the criticisms towards the choice of picking similar beats, this project was still one of few that reminded me why I love listening to his music. While this project definitely wasn’t his best, I can say for a fact it wasn’t his worst. Like for the love of god, the man has an album cover that depicts a dragon, a moon with a skull, a sun that is totally blazed, and rain that is composed of candy with the biggest piece falling being a fat lollipop with Trippie Redd’s face on it… how could you not want to listen to it?! Jokes aside, I’ll give this project a 7/10.

 

Favorite Songs: Molly Hearts, Finish Line, Super Cell, Miss the Rage, Matt Hardy 999, Vibes, Danny Phantom, Rich MF, Captain Crunch