Trippie Redd's "NEON SHARK vs. Pegasus (Deluxe: Presented by Travis Barker)

What’s up guys, I hope you guys had a great week! Today I am going to go over my opinion on the recently released Trippie Redd album, “NEON SHARK vs. Pegasus (Deluxe: Presented by Travis Barker)”. This is pretty much the deluxe version of Trippie’s “Pegasus” album that came out in 2020. Before we even touch the music, I wanted to talk about a new trend that I’ve been noticing in the rap genre these past couple of months. This trend is what I call the “DELUXE PACKAGE” (caps are necessary) where an artist releases a full length project, and instead of creating a deluxe album with a couple extra songs, we get the DELUXE PACKAGE which contains almost an entirely new project with a good amount of songs attached on top of the original album. I noticed this with Lil Uzi Vert’s album “Eternal Atake” and his deluxe version “Lil Uzi Vert vs. The World 2” and later with Nav’s album “Good Intentions” and “Brown Boy 2 (Deluxe)”. I personally have no idea how this trend affects the artist in terms of profit gained but I can sorta understand the creative aspect of it. This allows an artist to not only shock the fanbase with another project but also allows the artist themselves to experiment and work on a development that doesn’t have enough ground to hold as an individual project. This is something that I assumed to be a unique Lil Uzi trend as I enjoyed him doing something that was irregular but now.. now it’s a little messy. When it comes to Trippie’s version of the DELUXE PACKAGE, we get an entirely new genre with a rock project stacked on top of his “Pegasus” album, giving a mix of 40 songs. Yes, 40 songs all into one package with a dope album cover to wrap it all up.

Now, I was a very big Trippie Redd fan back in the days when Love Scars was starting to become viral. I was really into the Soundcloud rap phase by then and I thought Trippie had a unique voice that allowed him to compete with his peers. The raspy voice, the singing, the visuals of emo rap were key parts of what made Trippie unique and brought him to where he is now. The only issue I had after Trippie’s first couple projects was that he wasn’t showing any versatility or any effort to grow beyond what he was already good at. As projects kept dropping, I started losing interest. While there were good songs that piqued my interest throughout Trippie’s discography, I didn’t have the initiative to listen to any of his projects until we got NSVP on Friday. I was really excited to see Trippie try his hand at rock music and I hit play on this marathon of an album.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get much out of this rock aspect of Trippie either. To keep it short, Trippie’s rock package is full of amazing rock instrumentals by known artist Travis Barker, but Trippie doesn’t match Barker in both lyrical content and honestly… effort. The songs that have features I’ll say were the best ones just because I had a good time listening to Trippie’s features perform better than Trippie himself. Songs like Pill Breaker and Dead Desert push Trippie to the chorus backdrop while the other songs had Trippie just around while the other artists gave great performances. When you take away these moments of fresh air, I get left with an unstable Trippie struggling to find his ground on his solo songs. While some songs like “SAVE YOURSELF”, “LEADERS”, and “FROZEN OCEAN” were alright, it’s quickly masked by the songs:

“SWIMMING” - boring repetition that made him sound like Dory from Finding Nemo

“SEAWORLD” - a song that puts Trippie in the perspective of a shark as he uses his ‘shark bite to grab and protect his love’

“MEGLADON” - a song that again puts Trippie in the perspective of a shark ‘on the prowl, terrorizing it’s prey who happens to be a girl he’s after’ and ‘uses mating sounds of whales to symbolize his quest for love’

“DREAMER” - a song that samples a stuttering kid to push the idea that we are all dreamers LMFAO.

If it sounds like I’m dissecting the songs too much, I’m not because everything that was bolded was posted on the Genius page by fans who broke down the lyrical content of Trippie’s songs. I give Trippie props for at least putting his foot out there in trying to increase his versatility with different sounds, but I wish I saw more effort. The usage of autotune on this part of Pegasus I believe hurt him because it took away the raspy vocals that I think would fit the rock music perfectly. When it comes to lyrical content, I understand he’s going for something shark themed, but I think there could have been more effort in his lyrics. I didn’t add any new songs from this deluxe version and honestly made me enjoy the original “Pegasus” album more. I’ll post my favorite songs of the album below so you guys can enjoy them as well. Thanks for reading!

**ANY MUSIC THAT IS DISCUSSED IN THIS BLOG IS NOT OWNED BY ME AND BELONG TO THE ARTIST AND HIS/HER RECORD LABELS RESPECTIVELY**

Favorite songs on Pegasus: Let It Out, Moonlight, Love Scars 4, Excitement, Weeeee, Spaceships, I Got You, Kid That Didd, TR666, Sun God