The Ohio rapper’s new album sounds like a randomly generated playlist: tons of options, very little soul.
Trippie Redd still wants us to believe he can do it all. Since the start of his career, the Ohio rapper has embraced a passion for rap of every possible variety. He likes to glide on top of cloud-rap beats, kick rhymes over hard-nosed boom-bap drums, skip over trap hi-hats, and wail and thrash over crunchy emo-rap fusion and booming EDM drops. He doesn’t just wear multiple hats; he stacks them on top of each other like he’s trying to start a TikTok challenge. Trippie’s musical wanderlust sounds great on paper and works decently in short bursts, but in practice, and particularly on his latest album Pegasus, he sounds like a randomly generated playlist: tons of options, very little soul.
Trippie has cited Prince as an influence on the album, but many of these songs lack one of the core tenants of the Purple One’s music: personality. Passion isn’t a replacement for voice, and Trippie has burrowed further into the bad habits that plagued his bland 2019 sophomore album !. His musical ambitions are still scattershot, bouncing between different poles of rap from song to song, but he does attempt to branch out lyrically. Pegasus features more love songs than usual, a marked evolution for a rapper who once couldn’t be bothered to chase the feeling on the first “Love Scars” from 2014. It may be a change of pace, but it doesn’t boost his writing, which is as nondescript as a PornHub comment. “Transmission went out/Transitions, my house/New positions to try out,” he belts on “Love Scars 4.” Whether he’s talking about revealing new love (“Let It Out”) or navigating charged emotions (“Mood”), the songs feel anonymous, like any of his immediate peers could’ve written them.
The lack of a personal touch follows Trippie across Pegasus’ more amped-up sections as well. When he tries to inject more personality into a song, he often comes out sounding like someone else entirely. His flows and inflections on “The Nether” sound like Wiz Khalifa circa 2012. He channels Roddy Ricch’s nasal tone on the title track and Pi’erre Bourne’s bouncy melodies on “Good Morning.” When he does manage to stand out, his punchlines are jokes that wouldn’t pass muster in a middle-school cafeteria cipher. “Them hollows hit your chinny-chin, I’m like the Crimson Chin,” he growls on the hook for “Kid That Didd,” draining all momentum from the track.
Casting such a wide stylistic net yields a few successes across the album. Trippie settles into a nice rhythm on “No Honorable Mention,” outpacing guests Quavo and Lil Mosey with a fast-paced verse about flexing through trauma. The second entry in his “Oomp’s Revenge” series, dedicated to his late brother, provides a steady beat for Trippie to continue eulogizing his fallen soldier. Other highlights across Pegasus come from its many guests. There are scene-stealing features from PARTYNEXTDOOR, Young Thug, and Future. The most bizarre song on the album is “I Got You,” where Trippie swaps verses with Busta Rhymes while interpolating the chorus to Busta and Mariah Carey’s 2003 song “I Know What You Want.” Somehow, it’s also the most effortless collaboration on the entire project.
The scope of Pegasus — 26 songs stretched across 74 minutes, not including an extra six songs worth of “Spooky Sounds” — is staggering. It’s double the length of ! while retaining many of the same problems. Trippie would benefit from selecting a few of the several styles he insists on sampling on every project and focusing his energy instead of trying to be all things to all people. Until he’s ready to reel it in, he won’t be fit to claim mastery over any of them.
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