A Love Letter To Your 4 - Trippie Redd: Review
is an Ohio rapper who has become one of the most recognizable stars of the SoundCloud trap era of rap music. His Love Letter To You series of mixtapes helped tremendously to put him on the map and he has returned one every year since 2017.
Review By Lavender:
Trippie Redd has always been an artist that can be tough to pin down. I enjoyed him when he was first breaking out with his hugely popular feature on XXXTENTACION's Fuck Love and his 6ix9ine diss track Dark Knight Dummo. Despite my enjoyment of them I wasn't a huge fan of his ojnly mixtape at the time, the first A Love Letter To You. But later in 2017 he made a big improvement on the second edition of the series and I thought he was going in the right direction. 2018 was surprisingly identical as he started off with the disappointing studio album Life's A Trip, but later in the year turned out his best project yet with A Love Letter To You 3. While many reacted quite negatively to his second studio album ! earlier this year, I actually found myself a little bit more positive of it and I thought it was at least better than Life's A Trip. So the formula would show that Trippie's second release of the year would be an improvement and step in the right direction for him, but A Love Letter To You 4 is the longest record in the series yet, and it really didn't need to be.
There is certainly 30-40 minutes of solid material across this record starting with its two singles Who Needs Love, and Death. Love is a pretty solid trap ballad that features some classic Trippie crooning and a very infectious hook that really gets you into the lovesick mood the record so often goes for. Death on the other hand is more of a banger and features some pretty sharp verses from both Trippie and Da Baby. Love Me More is the prototype for what a good Trippie Redd song can be and it features a great raw almost punky vocal performance that is so uniquely him in the world of trap and it makes for one of the better tunes here. 6 Kiss is one of the tracks here that features a good contribution from a feature this time its Juice WRLD, (Juice WRLD tragically passed away while this review was being copy edited, Rest In Peace) who totally steals the show with a short piece in the beginning of the track. YNW Melly also apprars on the track but doesn't deliver the best verse I've ever heard from him.
U Deserve It is another one of the best tracks here that features Trippie singing an absolutely excellent hook that has been stuck in my head since I first heard it, the two featured artists are some that I don't have a ton of experience with aside from other Trippie records but they do a good job nonetheless. Hate Me has another good feature that sees Trippie and NBA Youngboy trading off bars with more chemistry than I would have thought they'd have for a pretty good tune. Sickening features Tory Lanez and while Trippie thoroughly out-raps and out-sings Tory the song still comes out pretty decent on the other end. Trippie jumps on a Wheezy beat on Chosen and despite some absolutely awful lyrics I do think the song is a highlight with some great samples laced into the beat and a fantastic hook. Finally the best song on the entire record happens to be the last song on the record, Can You Rap Like Me Pt. 2 in which Trippie Redd and Chris King spit some absolutely fire bars that are way sharper both in lyrical content and flow than just about anything else on the record. I would kill for Trippie to make a record where he is dropping shit like this track because it is one of my favorite I've ever heard from him.
Unfortunately just like any trap record we do have to go over the lengthy list of songs that are mostly of completely ruined by awful unnecessary features. This Ain't That starts off pretty good with a solid hook from Trippie but his verse is really nothing all that special and the Lil Mosey verse that follows is even worse. All For Me is a super mediocre collab between Trippie and Smokepurpp that has almost nothing worthwhile, with its only highlight being a spoken word sample of XXXTENTACION that ends the track off. The Grinch has a Pi'erre Bourne beat that goes pretty hard but that is all it has going for it as pretty much no other element of it is good at all. Speaking of Pi'erre Bourne he has a rap verse on M's, which is never ever a good sign for a song. On top of this Lil Yachty handles the hook here and I like Yachty as much as anyone but this hook is terrible and the entire song is a disaster.
Bust Down Deux has a collaboration with a French rapper that I'm unfamiliar with, but I don't think he puts his best foot forward here and it ends up being pretty flat. Abandoned is a song I want to like because the instrumental is simple but effective but unfortunately the songwriting just kind of sucks. Also the featured vocalist is mixed WAY higher than Trippie for no discernible reason and it kind of ruins the tracks transitional point. The worst one of all may be The Jungle Book a pretty standard trap affair that sees Trippie going pretty hard in a very solid verse, unfortunately to get there you have to sit through an agonizing and terrible Lil Wop feature that really should have been left off the song and ultimately the record.
The rest of the songs here vary from tolerable but forgettable like Real Feel and Love Sick to flat out horrible like Leray, Till The End Of Time or the strange and horrible nightmare that is RMP. There are plenty of ups on A Love Letter To You 4 but there are almost as many downs and it feels like a missed opportunity for Trippie who could have once again put together a great mixtape after a rough start to his calendar year. Unfortunately we will just have to stick with the good parts of the record and hope Trippie can finally break his trend and drop a great studio record next year. 5/10
And for more emo trap check out my review of Lil Peep's Everybodys Everything here
