In a trap environment where quantity is often more important than quality (Gucci Mane, anyone?), a triple album could well mean two hours of abject tedium. Not so in the case of Atalanta superstars Rae Sremmurd, whose monster ‘SR3MM’ record is a catalogue of impressively consistent tracks that demonstrate noteworthy musical development from their previous offering, 2016’s ‘Sremmlife 2’.
But trap - like punk and indie before it - has a problem. The genre’s appeal is based on its cheap, home-made quality, so broadening and polishing the sound brings difficult questions of integrity for the artist. If the sound goes fully mainstream, they will likely lose their base audience. If the artist sticks too closely to the original formula, that audience may leave them in search of fresher sounds.
They manage to walk this tightrope well, with the first disc, ‘SR3MM’, offering a quintessential Rae Sremmurd sound, while ‘Swaecation’ and ‘Jxmtro’ are essentially solo records from Swae Lee and Slim Jxmmi, thus offering more room for individual experimentation.
Disc one eclipses the other two, with tracks like Rock N Roll Hall of Fame and Perplexing Pegasus hitting the better trodden trap marks with wit and energy.
The latter covers the world of luxury swag, and such predictable subject matter is described with just about the right amount of fun braggadocio: “Aston sittin’ low / damn I scraped it (yeah!).” Actually, one of the most consistent aspects of this album is the call and response in the duo’s bars. On Perplexing Pegasus it runs as follows: “Yeah”, ‘yeah’ ‘woo, risk’, ‘brrr’, ‘ay!’ and so on. Their own brand of musical punctuation keeps the tracks energetic and spontaneous, despite the synthetic, tinny beats.
Elsewhere, songs like Powerglide (featuring Juicy J) demonstrate that musical development with driving loops, more adventurous arrangements and the now distinctive Rae Sremmurd pseudo-singing. Here, bars that might otherwise be rapped are fed through autotune and basically hover around one note, while the chords of the backing track dance behind. The result is a disarmingly sophisticated trap cut which just about manages to stay tasteful until Juicy J interjects with the atomic vulgarity of his opening line: “She got a million dollar pussy but I get it for free.”
The tone is mixed up, with Swae Lee’s Touchscreen Navigation offering a softer, driving dirge that has a patience that is atypical within trap. As a ballad it is only outshone by Bedtime Stories, which features the Weeknd’s smokey falsetto to fairly spine tingling effect. The voices on this track live in the autotuned upper range, which gives it a kind of melodic lunacy, while production by Mike WiLL Made-It is noteworthy for its inventive flourishes and layered composition.
He’s been the big noise in trap production for about three years now, but has remained fairly conservative regarding things like BPM, electric drum kits and chord choices. ‘SR3MM’ demonstrates a producer who is clearly keen to diversify his sound, and for much of the album it works well.
Elsewhere, on ‘Swaecation’, Offshore (feat. Young Thug) offers more of the soft, still grooves while retaining a rigid, siren-like melody. Young Thug is a remarkable rapper whose frenetic tonality elevates this repetitive cut, and while Swae Lee’s bars are often lost in a reverb-soaked reverie, the samples on this track - taken from Drake’s Show Me a Good Time and Oceans by Ye Ali - keep it relatable and catchy, if not quite hypnotic.
As we move onto ‘Jxmtro’, Anti-Social Smokers Club (featuring Zoe Kravitz) in particular manages to be both primitive and intricate. Kravitz shines, and though her verses get pretty edgy, the line “that’s why your boyfriend wants to take me for a dinner date” is a sexy reminder that double-entendres are still effective in a world of poetic baseness.
That said, the album falls away dramatically on the final lap. Tracks like Players Club and Brxnks Truck feel like afterthoughts, while Keep God First - a song that identifies the role of Christianity in Slim Jxmmi’s life - feels profoundly disingenuous after an hour and a half of greed, vanity and profanity. ‘SR3MM’ remains very impressive, though, and as an entry level introduction to trap music there are few better albums.
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