Travis Scott is one of the most well-known rappers in the industry right now. Despite the fact that he has not put out an album in over two years, his fans are extremely loyal and will go to war for him. Travis brings a unique offering of music to his fans. While the majority of rappers are known for the meaning behind their lyrics, Travis focuses mainly on the way his music sounds. He focuses on the layering of different beats and melodies within his songs. Because of this, I would like to take a look at the sentiment behind Travis’ lyrics to see if they have an overall positive or negative connotation. I will use the afinn lexicon to assign a positive or negative value on a scale of -5 to 5 to the top 15 most frequently used words in each of his 3 studio albums. I predict that the majority of Travis’ lyrics will hold a negative connotation. Because Travis puts so much effort into how his music sounds, he doesn’t necessarily focus on the actual words he’s rapping.

For more information on Travis Scott click here: Travis Scott Wikipedia Page

Load Required Packages

library(genius)
library(tidyverse)
library(tidytext)
library(tibble)

The first step in this analysis was to gather the actual lyrics from all of Travis’ albums. The code below demonstrates that.

rodeo <- genius_album("Travis Scott", "Rodeo")
birds <- genius_album("Travis Scott", "Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight")
astro <- genius_album("Travis Scott", "ASTROWORLD")

travis <- tribble(
  ~ artist, ~ title,
  "Travis Scott", "Rodeo",
  "Travis Scott", "Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight",
  "Travis Scott", "ASTROWORLD"
)

travis_lyrics<- travis %>% 
  add_genius(artist, title, type = "album")

The code below represents separating the 15 most frequently used words in Travis Scott’s Rodeo. Additionally, the afinn lexicon is used to conduct the sentiment analysis. You will see the same code used for Travis’ other two albums, just the title of each album is inserted.

Rodeo

travis_lyrics %>%
  unnest_tokens(word, lyric) %>%
  anti_join(stop_words) %>%
  filter(title %in% "Rodeo") %>%
  count(word, sort = TRUE) %>%
  inner_join(get_sentiments('afinn')) -> rodeo_sentiment
## Joining, by = "word"
## Joining, by = "word"
rodeo_sentiment %>%
  head(15) %>%
  ggplot(aes(word, n, fill=value)) + geom_col()

The first studio album that Travis Scott released was Rodeo. Rodeo features 14 songs. The chart shows that of the 15 most frequently used words, eight of them had an overall negative connotation. Of those eight words, five ranked with a strong negative connotation. Of the words with a positive ranking, the highest number or most positive word only came in with a rating of three. Based on this fact, I can say that Travis Scott’s Rodeo has an overall negative connotation. Next, I will look a Travis’ second studio album, Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight

Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight

travis_lyrics %>%
  unnest_tokens(word, lyric) %>%
  anti_join(stop_words) %>%
  filter(title %in% "Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight") %>%
  count(word, sort = TRUE) %>%
  inner_join(get_sentiments('afinn')) -> birds_sentiment
## Joining, by = "word"
## Joining, by = "word"
birds_sentiment %>%
  head(15) %>%
ggplot(aes(word, n, fill=value)) + geom_col()

Travis Scott’s second studio album called Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight was released in 2016 and also features 14 songs. The top 15 lyrics used in this album are interesting to look at. There is one major outlier, the word “yeah.”None of the other frequently used words was said more than 50 times, while “yeah” was used almost 350. Of the top 15 used words, seven of them had an negative rating. The curse words used obviously carry the most negative ratings. In this album, Travis uses roughly three very positive words, while the rest are slightly positive or neutral. Similarly to Rodeo, Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight also has an overall negative connotation. Lastly, I will analyze Travis’ most recent studio album, ASTROWORLD.

ASTROWORLD

travis_lyrics %>%
  unnest_tokens(word, lyric) %>%
  anti_join(stop_words) %>%
  filter(title %in% "ASTROWORLD") %>%
  count(word, sort = TRUE) %>%
  inner_join(get_sentiments('afinn')) -> astro_sentiment
## Joining, by = "word"
## Joining, by = "word"
astro_sentiment %>%
  head(15) %>%
ggplot(aes(word, n, fill=value)) + geom_col()

Travis Scott’s third and most recent studio album titled ASTROWORLD was released in the summer of 2018. Like his other albums, Travis uses curse words that carry the highest negative rating. Overall, eight of the top 15 used words have a negative connotation. However, ASTROWORLD sees the highest number of positive words. There are five words with a clear positive rating. There’s no question that ASTROWORLD is the most overall positive album Travis has released.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Travis Scott’s first two studio albums were relatively negative, while his most recent album was more positive. It’s important to note that Travis has publicly noted his vision and intentions for ASTROWORLD. As a native of Houston, Texas, Travis Scott grew up going to the local amusement park after the same name. Travis has stated that he wants his fans feeling like they are on a rollercoaster while listening to this album. Clearly, Travis has a high opinion of the Astroworld amusement park, so it’s not entirely surprising the album is his most positive one. Travis has yet to release his fourth studio album; however, he has released some of the details surrounding it. For example, Travis announced in late 2020 that his next album (to be released in 2021), will be titled “Utopia.” According to Webster’s Dictionary, the definition of this word is: a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government and social conditions. One can only assume that based off the name of this album, it will have an overall positive connotation. After Utopia is released, it will be interesting to see if Travis’ next album continues his trend of positiveness.