“Huncho Jack” does not deliver despite year-long hype
Quavo and Travis Scott released 'Huncho Jack, Jack Huncho' Thursday. Courtesy @trvisXX/Twitter
What a year it’s been for rap collaborations.
From the gem Offset, 21 Savage and Metro Boomin dropped in “Without Warning” to Big Sean and Metro Boomin’s “Double or Nothing” to whatever that was Young Thug and Future put out, there’s been a variety of quality content.
Now to end the year, Travis Scott and Quavo — the hookmaster of Migos — hooked up to put out the 41-minute album “Huncho Jack, Jack Huncho.”
Unfortunately, the result of these two monsters of the trap rap genre working together is an extremely average project.
The album kicks off with “Modern Slavery,” a really cool opener that allows both of the artists to stay in their lanes for the time being. Travis, throughout this project, does not surge to the forefront often — he mostly adds to the hook and instrumentals with his voice and autotune. His verses aren’t as captivating as the ones on his previous album.
Quavo, however, is forced to be a full-time lyricist in this album, which is weird to hear for over 40 minutes. It’s even weirder to hear because Travis insists on autotuning his voice throughout the project ever so slightly so we don’t get the crisp and melodic voice of Quavo we all love.
Once you get through all of that, it just feels like Quavo has too much on his plate here. During the Offset and 21 project, they traded verses and occasionally took a song off to let the other shine before balancing it out. Here, the songs get in a routine pretty quickly.
Quavo has his usual triplet flow as well as his own ad libs, and he does an OK job as primary rapper and hookman.
I don’t want to make is sound like Travis is just wallpaper though. He definitely sounds the most comfortable out of the two — even though they don’t have great chemistry. He had a few really solid verses, and it felt like he constantly tried to revive songs with his hooks or bridges, trying to recreate the magic from “Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight.”
But that leads me into another point, the hooks on this pale in comparison to the hooks on “Without Warning.” No sticky hooks, no hooks with a theme, none with a fun chorus — which is weird from these two. The best one is “Eye to Eye” — which is cool and fun — but that’s it.
As you work through the project, it starts getting redundant, but it’s still not bad music. The tracks “Modern Slavery,” “Eye to Eye,” “Moon Rock” and “How U Feel” standout the most to me because they feel different and have something those other tracks lack, whether that’s a good hook, better production or just a sample.
Everything about this project is just alright. As a fan of Travis’ and Quavo’s work in the past, especially both of their most recent projects, I expected more creativity and more variance in the songs. Travis can put you in trance with his music while Quavo can keep a good hook in your ear for days — or even weeks — at a time, so for them not to create more captivating songs is kind of weird.
Maybe they should have tried to grab Metro Boomin, or maybe this just isn’t a good pairing — which takes nothing away from them as artists.
Now, let’s look forward to their next albums, which should be “Culture 2” and “Astroworld” if the hype is true. A chance for these two goliaths of rap to return to normalcy.
Rating: 3/5 stars
Featured image: Quavo and Travis Scott released ‘Huncho Jack, Jack Huncho’ Thursday. Courtesy @trvisXX/Twitter
Absolutely absurd review!!! This is the best collaborative hip hop album to have come out this year, perhaps the second best collaborative hip hop album of all time (Watch The Throne being the first). The production on this project is particularly spectacular, it’s the highlight of the project. The flows these dudes are kicking are completely insane! Both artists are confident, I don’t understand what you meant by Travis being more confident. The songs do have substance, listen to the lyrics. Real music doesn’t need catchy hooks, even though this project does have catchy hooks regardless of what you said. Dude, I really think you don’t have a skilled ear, or you might have rushed through this project so that you can have a review up about it. Listen to it again with earphones, with speakers, and I really do mean listen. It’s a great project, the best trap project to have come out this year. I give it 8.5/10, a really stellar job from Travis and Quavo.