Days After Rodeo: A Travis Scott Timeline

It's been seven months since Travis Scott dropped his debut album Rodeo. His buzz grew steadily leading up to the album, and exponentially following the album's release. Of course, touring with Rihanna (on top of relationship rumors) didn't hurt, and Travis has also consistently kept his name in the blogosphere circle thanks to a stream of leaks (both unofficial and official).

Last night, things came full circle when Travis finally confirmed what many had presumed, that there would be a project called Birds In The Trap Sing McKnight, and not only that, he revealed his album's title, Astroworld. It seems as though BITTSM will be a mixtape and Astroworld Travis' sophomore album, but the internet isn't on the same page concerning these details, and Travis hasn't clarified yet.

Nonetheless while we wait on Birds In The Trap (which could drop "sooner than you motherfuckers can take a shit tonight") we're taking a look back at the moments that brought us here, some of which you might remember, and some of which you might have forgotten about.

Click through.

November 2015 – Travis teases a collaboration with Kendrick Lamar and Diddy.

Chances are, you probably forgot about this one. This was one of the first big pieces of news about new music from Travis following the release of Rodeo in September, and boy would it be a crazy line-up. Basically, six months ago, Travis posted a video on his Instagram which showed him in the studio with mega-mogul Puff and mega-rapper Kendrick Lamar. Given Travis and K. Dot’s penchant for experimenting with their vocals and flows, and Diddy’s OG ways, a track with all three would undoubtedly be fire. Will it finally surface on Birds In The Trap Sing McKnight???? Or is it lost to their respective studio stashes forever?

November 2015 – Travis debuts new music at live shows

Still in November of last year, Travis debuted new music back-to-back at two different live shows. It should be noted, we haven’t received official releases or much info on a couple of these records. Nonetheless, while at The Filmore in DC, Travis gave the crowd a preview of two unreleased (at the time) records. The first has been dubbed “The One (Left Check Right Cheek)” and has production from Vinylz and Allen Ritter, while the second, we would we later find out, was a collaboration for Wiz Khalifa’s album titled, “Bake Sale.” At this point in time, it had production from DJ Spinz, but due to G-Eazy purchasing the beat, the production was re-worked for KHALIFA thanks to TM88, Juicy J, Lex Luger and Crazy Horse.

At an afterparty a short time later, Travis debuted another new record which it seemed was a remix or re-appropriation of Tinashe’s “In the Meantime” cut, although Travis was quick to reply to us on twitter and say “this ain’t no remix bih.” There’s no clarification beyond that. So once again, we play the waiting game until more information surfaces. Are these more contenders for Birds In The Trap? Or Astroworld?

December 2015 – Travis drops “A-Team” and “Wonderful”

Just two months removed from Rodeo, and the Epic-signed rapper decided to drop two new records. Both were VERY HOTTTTT.  “Wonderful” happened to feature The-Weeknd, with a who’s who of producers (T-Minus, Boi-1da, Mike Dean and Travis himself). The second, “A-Team,” made its way to iTunes although it still seems to be just a loose cut, and was produced by frequent collaborator Allen Ritter. Both songs came with a note on Soundcloud: “My end of the year choices was spent on the kids.” Whatever that means, we’re still not sure. Perhaps he was just ridding himself of some records before the year started anew, but even if these were throwaways, fans had them on repeat.

January 2016 – Travis teams up with DJ Mustard, and more leaks

DJ Mustard got back into the swing of things with the release of a new single on January 7^th, and he tapped Travis Scott for vocals. While it’s definitely not Travis’ finest moment (nor DJ Mustard’s), fans still gobbled it up, for lack of other Travis music. Nonetheless it was dance-driven and not in Travis’ usual lane, so consider this a slight blemish in an otherwise solid timeline.

Following this official single, Travis suffered a few leaks in mid-January. The first was a premature release of “Bake Sale,” which went on to appear on Wiz Khalifa’s KHALIFA album and generally sounds more like a Travis Scott song than a Wiz one; as well as “Tourist,” an organ-key-riddled record that still lasn't landed anywhere in an official manner, and may never— it was rumored to be a Rihanna collaboration and/or demo, so it’s possible we won’t be hearing or seeing this one again. It still lives on the e-nets though. All these leaks just set the anticipation for our next slide.

January 2016 – Travis confirms new album on the way

As we ushered in 2016, Travis Scott confirmed with fans that he’d begun working on a new album (keep in mind, only a few months removed from Rodeo). The Houston native made the initial announcement via Snapchat, teasing fans with studio equipment and saying “new album on the way.” Was this the very start of Birds In The Trap Sing McKnight?

February 2016 – Travis expresses frustration with leaked music, “Uber Everywhere” remix arrives

Travis has had a hand in letting the public hear his music before it’s properly released, when he chooses to perform it for a live audience. However when the music makes its way on to the web in some other manner, in a form that wasn’t 100% planned by the rapper, it’s understandable that he gets frustrated. A month after that album announcement, an early leak hit the web of Travis’ extremely anticipated “Uber Everywhere” remix, which was enough to make Travis hop on twitter and air out his grievances. Much to the dismay of fans, it appeared as though the one leak had caused the loss of four new records. Travis tweeted at the time, “I was legit dropping 4 new joints thurs. but now FUCK.” He did seem to shrug off the whole incident quite easily though, with encouragement from his DJ Chase B, he later tweeted, “u know what @OGCHASEB u right we gon let it rock.”

So in the end, he didn’t actually drop those four new songs. However we did get the official version of his “Uber Everywhere” record, and it should be noted that in the song’s Soundcloud description, Travis wrote, “birds in the trap sing mcknight soon,” thus already foreshadowing what was to come, even if we didn’t notice at the time.

March 2016 – Travis Scott & Young Thug ready new single

The bawse himself Lyor Cohen took to Snapchat one day in March (March 29, to be precise), where he heralded Travis’ yet to-be-released album as a “classic” and teased an upcoming collaboration with 300-signed artist Young Thug.

“I was in the studio yesterday with Travis Scott,” Cohen shared with fans. “He has an album that is going to be a classic.... Thug and Travis are gonna finish up Travis’s first single that we’re gonna put out in the next few days. Yeah, you heard that.”

While it’s the general consensus that the song with Young Thug (and Quavo) will still be his album’s first single, he has yet to release it officially, although we’ve received full-length previews of it since (in galleries to come…).

April 2016 – Travis tweets “Birds In The Trap Sing McKnight,” previews “Pick Up The Phone”

Travis got some more foreshadowing going with the whole Birds In The Trap Sing McKnight by tweeting out the words on April 5th, and deleting the rest of his tweets-- he's since deleted that tweet as well, with just one tweet from May 8th remaining on his timeline at this moment. That same day, we received a preview of the aforementioned record with Young Thug, thanks to footage captured on an “ANTI” tour stop. At the time, it was unclear the song featured Quavo, as we only heard a snippet of the song.

April 2016 – Travis teases his album's opening track

Towards the end of April, Mike Dean inconspicuously uploaded an instrumental to his Soundcloud. The instrumental was titled “Grande Faucon,” and while it was dope, it didn’t attract a crazy amount of attention until Travis tweeted at Mike Dean, saying, “This actually The intro to my album.” Check out the synthesizer-heavy record below. It’s definitely a futuristic way to start the album.

April 2016 – Travis previews full single, which also features Quavo

Still in April, Travis gifted fans more goodies when he played the entire single that Lyor Cohen had told fans about a month prior. As it turned out, “Pick Up The Phone” actually featured Quavo of Migos as well, and Quavo can be heard dropping the lyric “birds in the trap sing McKnight” during his verse. We’re still waiting on the single’s proper release, but this version’s about as good as it gets in the meantime.

May 2016 – "Birds In The Trap Sing McKnight" & "Astroworld"

Of course, this whole timeline was a lead up to today, or perhaps more accurately, last night. While performing in his native Houston, Travis decided to reveal some information to the fans in attendance. The rapper not only revealed the title for his album Astroworld (although there’s some confusion if this is his third album/sophomore album, depending on what BITTSM is), he confirmed that Astroworld will be the project that follows BITTSM. There’s more. He also told fans to expect his single, “Pick Up The Phone” in “like a couple weeks” (he swears), and that Birds In The Trap would be “coming sooner than you motherfuckers can take a shit tonight.” Geez, so like, shouldn’t it have dropped already? Either way, be at the ready.

He said he's dropping Pick up the phone in a few weeks, and BITTSM is coming sooner than we can take a 💩 pic.twitter.com/3B12Vhh70H