Travis Scott speaks about Astroworld tragedy for the first time in interview with Charlamagne Tha God
The rapper recalls the evening of November 5 and the festival that left 10 dead and many more injured
Aux News Travis Scott
Travis Scott, for the first time, speaks out about the events of his Astroworld festival that left 10 people dead and dozens injured. In a somber, hour-long conversation with Charlamagne Tha God, Scott shares his own recollection of the evening. He also discusses “rage” culture, future concert safety, and extends condolences to the victims’ families.
Charlamagne asks Scott when he learned that his concert had turned into a mass casualty event and the rapper explains that he only learned moments before the press conference. “Even after the show,” he says, “You’re just kind of hearing things but I didn’t know the exact details until minutes before the press conference. But even at that moment you’re just kind of like ‘Wait, what?’”
Scott also says that while he was performing, he never heard the pleas of attendees in the crowd, desperately calling for help. “It’s so crazy because I’m that artist too—[like] anytime you can hear something like that, you want to stop the show,” he explains. “You want to make sure fans get the proper attention they need. Any time I could see anything like that, I did. I stopped it a couple of times to just make sure everybody was okay. And I really just go off the fans’ energy as a collective—call and response. I just didn’t hear that.”
Scott says a combination of the music from his in-ear audio monitors, pyrotechnics, and stage lights made it difficult for him to see.
During the interview, the rapper also addresses the “rage” culture that has become such an integral part of his live concerts within the last few years. “In the past, you’ve encouraged, I guess, the kind of energy that could have led to something like this happening. Do you think that could have contributed to the energy of this night?” Charlamagne asks him.
“Something I’ve been working on for a while is creating these experiences and trying to show these experiences are happening in a safe environment,” Scott responds. “Us as artists, we trust professionals for when things happen that people can leave safely. And this night was just like a regular show, it felt like to me, as far as the energy. It didn’t feel like, you know… people didn’t show up there just to be harmful. People just showed up to have a good time and then something unfortunate happened and I think we really just got to figure out what that was.”
Charlamagne also presses Travis Scott about his involvement with the planning of the festival, which was criticized for its “poor planning” and “understaffing.” Scott explains, “As an artist [performing at the festival] you just do the creative [aspects]. And for this to be my festival, you know, I bring artists, creatively produce it, and we just trust in the professionals to make sure that people are taken care of and [are] leaving safely. I just control what I can on the stage, and then you have the professionals to control what they can in the crowd. It’s just hard because as an artist you want to have the best shows and you want to have the best experiences so you link with professionals to handle that side of it.”
As far as those “professionals” go, Scott is careful to not to completely foist the blame onto LiveNation or ScoreMore, the promoters. “They do their job of setting these things up, so when we dial into what specifically happened here, I feel like even they can kind of help figure out what happened in a sense. But at the end of the day, I think collectively everyone just needs to figure out the bottom line solution, especially with concert safety. We got to make sure these things are done right.”
And when Charlamagne asks him to elaborate about concert safety and what precautions Scott will take to avoid future tragedies, Scott responds, “[I will] double down on making sure everybody is locked in and everyone is aware and everyone is on response. Everybody is on it.” Ultimately, Scott expresses his desire to have more of a call and response system in place with his crowd.
The full interview can be watched above.
30 Comments
That screenshot from the video kinda makes it look like he is sitting on Charlemagne’s lap.
“And now you, Travis, what do you want for softball interview christmas?”
The only thing worse than a Kardashian grifter is peripheral assholes like Travis Scott, who try to capitalize on the family’s undeserved fame.
“Peripheral Asshole” is a better rap name than Travis Scott. Don’cha think?
So is “Doggy Poopie.”
Da Poop
Poop Doggy Log
Sniff Doggy Doo
‘Lil Turd. Baby Poopie. Travis Tha’ Terdd.
Until the Astroworld disaster, I thought Travis Scott was a country singer.
Saddest thing about it is Travis Scott has reproduced . The movie Idiocracy becomes more and more likely by the day . More amoral, vapid , and entitled people are having children than not .
He’s a pretty talented artist though
Was the “maddening” interview “practically criminal”?
It was a criminal interviewing a criminal, not sure what’s so practically about it
Travis and Charlemagne have to be two of the dumbest individuals in music today. It’s painful to watch either of them try.
This will surely be easier than his eventual interview with Tha Actual God (if you believe in that kind of thing.)
Aren’t you supposed to refrain from from talking publicly about the event with a court case pending?
Maybe he has Alec Baldwin’s lawyer.
Well, anything he says can be used against him . . . no matter how stupid or poorly thought-out.
Yes, but it also allows him the benefit of steering public opinion in his favor outside a forum where he is made to stick to the facts. Not saying he’s done that here, honestly don’t care enough to listen to this asshole, but the ability seems like a possibility.
Semi-unrelated:Hearing him keep throwing around the phrase “as an artist” really feels like he’s doing two things: 1) trying to convince himself that what he does is art and 2) removing himself from this particular situation by making it seem like artists IN GENERAL are all like him.Also, he took absolutely NO responsibility for the culture that he has brewed at his live shows. Honestly, this interview only makes him seem MORE like the industry plant people claim he is.
Hot take: As someone who has attended multiple Travis Scott concerts, he sounded very truthful here. Specifically ““It’s so crazy because I’m that artist too—[like] anytime you can hear something like that, you want to stop the show,” he explains. “You want to make sure fans get the proper attention they need. Any time I could see anything like that, I did. I stopped it a couple of times to just make sure everybody was okay.” That’s very accurate to my experience of seeing him live – he is not at all afraid to stop the show if he sees something wack or too wild happening, and call out for help if he sees someone who needs it. It’s very unfortunate that in this instance, the chaos of the crowd where it turned fatal was obscured due to whatever combination of lights/noise/feedback/energy
Bullshit; the event organizers let the show finish, despite being ordered to shutdown. And this isn’t the first time it’s happened at one of his events, he has a history of doing this shit.
It’s interesting to hear this, because the comments here tend to skew towards people who first insist that they’ve never heard of Travis Scott before, but then proceed to harshly rebuke the culture he’s created, seemingly based only on instagram stories they’ve watched.
I’m not trying to let this dude off without any responsibility but I’ve been to a couple of shows/festivals (not Travis Scott) where this kind of situation started to happen and thank God, no one died but I wouldn’t blame the artist, I’d blame the assholes who were shoving their way to the front. This situation might be different, I don’t know, I wasn’t there and he might very well be responsible but the few times it’s happened to me, I never thought to blame the artist. But they weren’t encouraging the fans to rage either.
Security was lax, lots of people just crashed the event. The medics were completely understaffed (and according to some concertgoers who work as nurses and had to fill-in to help, had no idea what they were doing). And Scott wasn’t just “the artist”. This was his event that was put on by his company Cactus Jack Records.
This was Scott’s festival, he had elderly people running security and completely untrained medical staff, then he kept telling the crowd to rush the stage despite the Chief of Police telling him to stop the show. He went on for another 45 minutes so a bunch of neanderthals could inflate his ego by killing each other.Fuck Travis Scott. He’s a piece of shit, and the best thing he could is sit the fuck down, retire, and fade into obscurity; instead he’s out here pretending like he actually gives a fuck about his fans, when this is the third-such time he’s incited a riot that wound-up with innocent people being murdered for no reason.He can go die in a fucking fire, for all I care. And his music sucks, too.
This site has an odd tone problem when it comes to reporting on these types of stories – compare the language in this article (which seems to be neutral to mildly sympathetic towards Scott) with the language in the article on Alec Baldwin’s 20/20 interview (https://www.avclub.com/alec-baldwin-says-he-has-no-responsibility-for-rust-dea-1848154303). Admittedly, this could flow directly from the tone of the two different interviewers, but there’s still something of a ‘yeah, right’ vibe to the AV Baldwin piece that isn’t present here.
The Root is deeply racist against White people in general. They get away with it because they can pretend to themselves that they are fighting back against mainstream media’s admittedly prevalent habit of doing the same in the other direction. Thing is, if you’re doing the exact same thing as those you criticize it’s no longer a subversion, you’re just the same asshole they are.It’s a popularly acceptable form of bigotry I am certain future generations will look back on in shame.
That devil worshipping sack of 💩 is responsible for the death of innocent people…….didn’t those parents get arrested for their son’s school shooting??? He should be responsible too along with everyone involved like the city of Houston, promoters, Drake, etc. It’s only liberal logic. Can you sheep be a bit more consistent please.