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- December 23, 2021
Travis Scott has finally opened about and spoke about the Astroworld tragedy in a 50-minute conversation with Charlamagne Tha God that was posted Thursday. This is his first interview since the festival on November 5th that had killed 10 people. The rapper had claimed he was not aware that anyone had died until after his performance. “I’ve been on different types of emotions, an emotional rollercoaster. It gets so hard because I always feel connected to my fans, and I went through something and my fans went through something and people’s parents went through something and it really hurts. It really hurts the community, it hurts the city. It’s just been a lot of thoughts, a lot of feelings, a lot of grieving, and just trying to wrap my head around it,” said Scott.
He spoke about why finally decided to do an interview almost a month after the tragedy and also about the litigation against him and the festival organizers that is pending. He added, “Something happened and I needed just a way to communicate.” When Charlamagne asked Scott when he had first realised that people were killed at the Astroworld festival he answered, “It wasn’t really until minutes until the press conference [after the show] that I figured out what happened. Even after the show, you’re just kind of hearing things, but I didn’t know the exact details” Scott said. “And even at that moment, you’re like, ‘Wait, what?’ You just went through something.” Scott also added, “People pass out, things happen at concerts, but something like that…”
The rapper also said that he did not hear the fans screaming in between songs asking him to stop the concert. “It’s so crazy because I’m that artist, too — anytime you can hear something like that, you want to stop the show, you want to make sure fans get the proper attention they need. Anytime I could see anything like that, I did. I stopped it a couple of times to just make sure everybody was OK. And I really just go off the fans’ energy as a collective — call and response. I just didn’t hear that.” Scott also added that he had only seen a fan who was in peril, as shown in a video of the concert, he had stopped the performance briefly to ensure the medical units could get to the fan. He also claimed that he had noticed the medic lights in the back of the crowd and had “double-checked” to ensure that everyone was okay. “I got a response everyone was OK,” he had said and added that he was unaware of whether the lights were from an ambulance or not.
He added that the show had continued for almost another 40 minutes after the Houston police decided that it was a “mass casualty event” because he claims that he was told that the show must end only after the guests (Drake) appeared on the stage. Nevertheless, Scott also said that he was not given a reason as to why the performance was being cut short. “I’m the face of the festival, I’m the artist, so the media wants to put it on me, but at the end of the day I don’t think it’s more so about that, it’s more so about stepping up to figure out what the problem is. And I could take that,” he said. “I could take stepping out to figure out what the problem is, I could take stepping up to figure out what the solution is so that it never happened again.”
Watch the full interview here.
