Trip Lee The End Album Download
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Trip is the second studio album by American singer-songwriter Jhen Aiko. It was released on September 22, 2017, by ARTium and Def Jam Recordings.[2] It succeeds Aiko's debut album Souled Out (2014), which was released three years prior, and the collaborative album Twenty88 (2016), while releasing numerous non-album singles in between. The production on the album was primarily handled by frequent collaborators Dot da Genius, Fisticuffs, No I.D. and Key Wane, along with several other record producers such as Amaire Johnson, Frank Dukes, Benny Blanco, Cashmere Cat and Mike Zombie. The album also includes guest appearances from Big Sean, Swae Lee, Kurupt, Brandy, Mali Music, Aiko's father, with the moniker, Dr. Chill, Aiko's daughter, Namiko Love, and Chris Brown.
Trip was released without prior announcement, supported by the lead single "While We're Young". Other singles include "Hello Ego" featuring Chris Brown, "Sativa" featuring Rae Sremmurd,[3] and "Never Call Me" featuring Kurupt. Trip received generally positive reviews from critics and was a moderate commercial success. The album debuted at number five on the US Billboard 200 chart, earning 32,000 album-equivalent units in its first week.[4] It was also certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in November 2018.[5]
Describing the album's conception, Aiko stated that she wanted to create an album to showcase all of her personalities and express these. The album was inspired by different kinds of trips Aiko has experienced including mental, physical, and psychedelic.[7]
On October 11, 2017, Aiko announced a headlining North American concert tour in support of the album titled "Trip (The Tour)" with Willow Smith, Kitty Cash and Kodie Shane that will take place in November and December 2017, and a European leg was later announced. Aside from her own tour, Aiko toured with American singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey during January 2018 on the LA to the Moon Tour.[10]
Trey Alston of HipHopDX believed the album to be "a moody yet breezy continuation of [Aiko's] established aesthetic that ultimately lacks growth of her musical capabilities".[1] In a positive review of the album, Pitchfork explains "Trip works because it isn't just about self-medicating or journeying through a grief-ridden mind."[8]
Trip debuted at number five on the US Billboard 200 chart, earning 32,000 album-equivalent units (including 10,000 copies as pure album sales) in its first week.[4] This became Aiko's fourth US top-ten debut.[4] The album also accumulated a total of 37.8 million on-demand audio streams of the album's songs during the tracking week.[4] On November 29, 2018, the album was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for combined sales and album-equivalent units of over 500,000 units in the United States.[14] In 2018, Trip was ranked as the 126th most popular album of the year on the Billboard 200.[15]
"Oblivion is kind of like nirvana, where you become nothing and you don't have to suffer over and over again," Jhen Aiko says. "You're free to just be nothing." Courtesy of the artist/Def Jam hide caption
Somewhere between pop-oriented R&B and traditional soul, the singer-songwriter floats like an ethereal voice disembodied from typical format and genre distinctions. So when we talk one week prior to the unannounced release of her epic new album, it comes as no surprise that she's much more interested in easing into the big reveal rather than making a huge splash.
"I don't like hyping stuff up," she says. "It's personal. It's not something contrived or something I want to turn into this big deal.... I just want to share it without it being something people are expecting."
Several years in the making, Trip is totally unexpected. The autobiographical soundscape of Aiko's healing journey follows the loss of her brother, Miyagi Chilombo, to cancer in 2012, and her futile quest to replace that love with romantic relationships and vices that failed to fill the void.
The youngest of five siblings, each born two years apart, Aiko was closest in age and kinship to Miyagi before his death. "Often, when you're dealing with grief, it's kind of like you relapse," Aiko says. "Something little can stretch you all the way back to that moment and you're starting all over and reliving everything. So that keeps happening to me, but the older I get I feel like I'm finding a way to not let it completely disable me. My writing is like my therapy. That's what I turn to."
Most of the songs began as poems she penned in journals, often during trips she began taking in solitude to nature sanctuaries like Big Sur. Beyond the field trips, or even the drug-induced trips that drive much of the narrative, Aiko's odyssey rises to levels metaphorical and metaphysical as her quest turns further inward over the hour-and-a-half span of dreamlike, meditative grooves.
"A few years ago, I took my first road trip by myself to Big Sur. I was going through a difficult relationship, I missed my brother and was just going crazy. And I had taken some magic mushrooms with me. As I was driving up there, I was listening to instrumental music and classical music and singing over it out loud and talking to myself. I was recording everything on my voice memo. It wasn't even with an album or anything in mind; it was just for me. I just started doing that often. After Big Sur, I started hiking and writing and taking pictures. I formed a habit of escaping and going on these trips. I still do it and I find that it really helps me. Psychedelics aided in that. While recording new songs for this project, I revisited the notebook that I had been keeping. The song 'LSD' pretty much sets you up for the trip."
"It's definitely a place I've been in my mind: 'Hmm, if I were to decide to do that, how would I do it?' So we started with a guitar and I wanted to write a song about that place and go there in my mind. I know that sounds morbid, but it was true. It was a fantasy of me going there. It's not super obvious in the song, but I say how my feet keep touching the ground [and] it's not working for me. Then I'm saved by a guy. But in real life I was on a hike in Big Sur and I was getting emotional. Then I looked up through the trees and I saw the sun. It felt like the sun saved me, which, in itself, is [symbolic]: the Son of God or the sun in our solar system. It just felt like a love story.
"It's a double/triple entendre: The male voice that you hear throughout the album is the love interest or my conscience. He also represents the devil disguised as an angel, because he keeps offering me these drugs. It's like, 'Who are you, really?' He appears at first to be an angel, but then he turns into someone that is not."
"'While We're Young' is my ideal love situation. It's also the feeling of a new love, when you're kind of nave and first falling in love with someone and super optimistic about everything. That starts the love story in the album."
"We actually worked on 'Moments' in Hawaii. I was on a trip with [Big] Sean and we recorded it out there. There were even some sounds that we picked up from hikes we took and put on the track. Sean really had the 'Moments' idea. I wasn't sure when we recorded it if we were going to have it be a part of our TWENTY88 [collaborative project] or for me or for him. But then, when it came down to it, I realized it fit perfectly within my storyline."
"In my mind I have this whole vision of the end of the world, with alien invasions and meteors falling and only the lovers being spared their lives. It feels kind of prophetic to me. We're celebrating but we also have to continue to love each other so that we continue to thrive. I love that we turned it into a jam song, because in my mind we all find refuge in a skating rink. That's the point where all the lovers are meeting up. This is in the beginning, when the love story is still alive and thriving within the album.
"'OLLA' started off a lot more serious [because of] the track that I wrote it to. Then I got with Amaire Johnson, he produced 'One Man Can Change The World' with Big Sean. We work really well together; just straight jam sessions. He'd start playing a little something and I'd start singing a lyric. I loved the vibe. It's more like a party celebrating the fact that we're the only lovers left."
"I don't even remember writing that song. I just remember recording it in, like, two hours. It all just came to me: It's like he's lying and telling me whatever he needs to say to keep me feeling this way. But I like that; do whatever you have to do to keep me here. It introduces [the period] when you start to feel more aware in love. It ushers in those question.
"It's a Fisticuffs track and they know sativa is my favorite. They named the track 'Sativa,' so I knew no matter what I talked about on this song I wanted to keep the name, because it definitely feels like sativa. I had this melody for almost two years now and I just couldn't put it into words. Everyone, even No I.D., was like, 'Why don't you just put it on your album like that, so people can just feel what you're saying.' Then, at the very last minute, Amaire, who produces on the album, said, 'We should call Swae Lee.' And I'm a fan. So we had a session, he came through and he came through. That inspired me and I came up with new verses."
"I started writing this when I had a crush on this boy. Then I fell out of the crush with him and I couldn't finish it. It inspired a great first verse but then I realized I didn't feel that way anymore, so I wasn't inspired. Then I found love again and was able to finish the song and really be extra, extra passionate about what I was saying. And the stuff in the first verse also applied to the new love.
"I've always wanted to work with John Mayer; he's in my top three artists of all time. So we called him to the studio and he brought his guitar and jammed out. I played him some stuff and he said, 'I'll play on that one.' After the new stuff he added, I added the new verse and everything else to it."
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