The Singles Jukebox

I’ve got love stretch marks myself…

[Video][Website]
[6.88]

Micha Cavaseno: This year, arguably one of the top five music books that served as hilarious talking points was Meet Me In The Bathroom, an oral history of the ‘indie’ boom of the dawn of the 21st century by many of the characters, carnies and cartoons who made up “the movement who saved rock’n’roll.” It felt like a joke that in the same year when many mutuals invoked “Mr. Brightside” to canonical classic standard, a trio of rap records (Luv is Rage 2, Miami Garden Club and 17) impressed upon me that while it was this field our peers have deemed fit to memorialize it was the kids who grew up on ‘screamo’ Soulja Boy covers who were defining the present. Trippie Redd, a friend to xxx and proposed “rival” to Uzi, at his finest might remind friends of The Weeknd but instead I get more a bizarre swill of Swae Lee with Geoff Rickley of Thursday (especially on that dramatic gasp on “thinking that you had a past”). That is, until he swan dives his voice into phlegmy rattles that scrape along the sides of your ears like the car-crash melodrama he’s so captivated with projecting on “Love Scars,” with its glitchy 808 explosions and the crumbling Metroid sample mining that feeling of failure paired against adolescent understandings. How strange it seems that our so-called ideals are unable to be valuable in our present, but our shameful stumbled of underdeveloped and shameful experience? Those seem more viable than ever.
[8]

Nortey Dowuona: Bulky drums crowd out the screen synths and Trippie’s nasal, whiny voice scatters and falls apart upon the beat.
[5]

Alfred Soto: The lust-fueled agony in Trippie’s timbre does suggest he’s carrying scars of some kind, and it’s scarier than the competition. Just the right length too. 
[6]

Ryo Miyauchi: The knee-jerk reaction to “Love Scars” is to cover my eyes with both of my hands from the sight of the awfully raw wound of Trippie Redd. His ear for melody is such a sinister, deceivingly sweet vehicle for an emotion very vile, so I also can’t help but to peek through the cracks of my fingers. While he styles his lyrics to resemble the modern rapper, he shows his true self when he painfully stretches his end rhymes to the brink. He can’t sing in the technical sense, but he squeezes out noise from his body like it’s the only way he knows how to break free.
[8]

Brad Shoup: That chorus has the dramatic fatalism of a great pop-punk song; the rest comes off like pop-punkers writing a protest song. Lil 14 absolutely knows how to write and deliver a hit; he works himself into a froth and lets the lather curdle. I’d rather have some full-length fatalism.
[6]

Stephen Eisermann: I’m not sure if Drake is still seen as the “emo” rapper, but, honestly, Trippie just did it better. The echoes on his voice make the all up in my feelings mindset audible, and Trippie’s off the cuff delivery feels like the perfect accompaniment to a long, nighttime drive. 
[7]

Josh Langhoff: Flirting with tedium and foregoing a chorus, this weird-ass love serenade is a duet for giant Marshmallow Man-sized bass bwonggggs and Trippie Redd’s obnoxious, retching, free-associative singsong rap. Beats Schumann.
[7]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Trippie Redd’s at his best here, navigating his heartbreak through a series of embittered wails. As he stays in this headspace, periodic bursts of anger and despair manifest violently. But as unhinged as they may seem, their calculated placements prove useful in keeping the song afloat, both in their pacing and as a tool to help him amusingly rhyme “lemonade” with “Hennessy”. He’s upset, and he’s going to make sure that he uses every opportunity to draw attention to it by blaming someone else, be it through caustic attacks (“Your bitch pussy nasty as fuck, she got a little bit of yeast”) or self-important pleas for pity (“You used to say you in love, you got me so fucked up”).
[8]