Last week Travis Scott and Quavo abruptly broke the silence on their long-teased collaborative project. Over the course of one night they released a frantic stream of album art, samples, and tentative tracklists.
As to be expected from two of the most polarizing hip-hop artists, Huncho Jack, Jack Huncho has been met with intense scrutiny. There’s a gripe for every facet of this project — album art, length, symmetry— and praise for every gripe.
What we were interested in is the production. Travis Scott and Quavo share an affinity for autotune, trap snares, and ad-libs. These have become standard tools of mainstream trap, with differences arising in the timbre and intensity. Those differences compound when we consider how little overlap there has ever been between Migos’ and Travis Scott’s producers. To those who don’t see the nuance of trap beats, we are talking about a challenging compromise. At times these two successfully meld their styles, though often the lyrical arrangements are lopsided and clunky.
This isn’t a complete dissection of content. Rather, we wanted to focus on the efforts that help tie together the voices and personalities of these two rappers.
1. Motorcycle
An easy choice for best production, the bouncy and elastic melody is an ominous throughline. Travis Scott and Quavo take turns trying to chase down some urgent impulse that colors the song, never quite keeping up. And that deference to the beat is the song’s true achievement.
2. Modern Slavery
Much like the production on Metro Boomin’s recent Double or Nothing, this song makes me think that we are about to see our basic assumptions about trap music challenged. Buddha Bless creates a severe juxtaposition— intense snares and Otis Redding’s occasional gasp from beneath the drums. It isn’t just the innovation of sampling brought to trap, but how little discrete sections are chopped up and rearranged in the song. Even as Travis Scott and Quavo lose themselves in the chains and sauce, that guitar riff pulls you back to the Redding and the cigarettes and coffee.
3. Black & Chinese
In an impressive solo production, Southside tears away all but the skeleton of that Atlanta sound he helped popularize with beats for Future and Migos. He dresses the corpse in dull, groaning synths and a urgent, choppy strings (maybe to match the “Chinese” part”?). This one is meant to be played at maximum volume flying down the freeway.
4. Saint Laurent Mask
Simplicity isn’t a word normally associated with Quavo or Travis Scott. On “Saint Laurent Mask”, the music is built around glittery chimes and piano keys, and the rappers’ voices become incorporated into a vast transmutation of sound and color.
5. Best Man
Mike Dean’s recent pivot into lazery, electric synths and empty space are pushing a new kind of robo-trap. It’s perfect for Travis Scott’s flavor of autotune. Quavos, not so much. In either case, stick around to the end for a smooth switch up into a beautiful flange-treated outro.
6. How U Feel
The main sample on this song has an interesting provenance. It’s taken from an obscure japanese song, “The Word II”, performed on an electone and sampled by Mac Demarco. Quavo and Travis Scott’s treatment of it is a bit confused and disoriented. The sample creates an end-of-night reflective mood, but the drums and rapping blast us into a turnup.
7. Where U From
Everything in this song seems to blow in with the breeze and then dissipate. There’s only a guitar to keep you tethered. This song doesn’t belong to winter release— save it for a long summer evening.
8. Go
Vinylz and CuBeatz take Travis Scott’s autotuned reverb and stretch it into its own instrument. It’s the perfect mellow texture to balance out the unenthused claps and drums that compose this song’s beat.
9. Dubai Shit
A long synth and voices seeping from the edge. Then a confusing mess of lyrics and drums. This song is built around a cool snaking production, but it never manages to build past that.
10. Huncho Jack
If the title track was supposed to shape into this album’s zenith, Travis Scott and Quavo misunderstood their own aims. The production on this one is dense and unwelcoming, with too many hums and ad-libs and a crashing drum arrangement that degrades into noise.
11. Saint
“Saint”’s strongest feature is the mischievous little melody that opens and closes it out. It’s like a music box on fast forward. Unfortunately, the wonder and charm of that tune snaps shut when the track gets flooded with a badly-tempoed hi-hat and snare arrangement.
12. Moon Rock
Travis Scott must have a vault of these late-night, howl at the moon beats. The sound of trap snares cut by intermittent, haunting piano chords has been old for a couple of years now. Aside from the monotony, this kind of production can't find a place for Quavo, whose vocals either fall to the side or become an imitation of Travis'.
13. Eye 2 Eye
Murda Beatz has genercized his own style. Once an innovator of quick, less dirty-sounding trap, his music has failed to evolve. His fingerprints can be lifted from the least moving and forgettable beats on most of Migos or Travis' songs.