He’s still great at putting odd choices in surprisingly dope places: 2 Chainz shows flashes of 2012 brilliance instead of handling hook duty, Justin Bieber goes Peak Biebervelli with a hot 16. Sometimes the indulgence works: at nearly 8 minutes long “ 3500” sounds like the year 3500 it's fully engrossing futuristic trap. gamely stepping into Common’s narrator role with casual verve and a script that simply must be winking at Tip’s reputation for being unnecessarily verbose. Instead it begins and ends much like Cudi’s debut, with T.I. Rodeo’s been anticipated as a Yeezus sequel of sorts, but at 25 minutes longer, it has no interest in being as light on its feet.

Is it as successful as either? Welp, not quite. What we have in Rodeo then, is an album heavily inspired by both Yeezus (duh) but also, perhaps moreso, Man on the Moon. Ironically, if there’s one person La Flame admires and idolizes more than Ye, it’s Kid Cudi, who similarly helped Kanye build a new sound before going on to create his own debut. You come because even though the guy is far from a show-stopping rapper and doesn’t even always handle production duties, he has a Kanye-level ear for putting the best producers, engineers, and guests together to create one hell of a fresh-sounding song. You come for the unique, gothic sound, the one he helped Kanye West craft on Yeezus and later expanded on in his stellar sophomore mixtape, Days Before Rodeo. You don’t come to a Travi$ Scott project looking to be blown away lyrically. It’s also redundant, as the previous 13 and a half tracks have made that perfectly clear. “I am everything except a rapper.” That’s a good, honest plea to cop coming from rapper/producer/but mostly awesome curator Travi$ La Flame Scott on the outro to his debut album.

Perfectly clear review 2015