Travis Scott has broken his silence over AstroWorld in a new interview.
The Houston festival descended into carnage, with a crush killing 10 people – the youngest, Ezra Blount, was only nine years old.
Travis Scott is facing numerous lawsuits, and apart from a short IG video has retained a degree of silence after the disaster.
Sitting down with Charlamagne tha God, this new hour-long interview covers the events at AstroWorld, and how it impacted on him personally.
Travis Scott was heavily criticised for continuing with his headline set at the festival, but he reiterated that he did not know while onstage what was happening in the audience.
“I didn’t know the exact details until minutes before the press conference [after my set],” he said. “And even at that moment you’re like, ‘Wait, what?’”
“People pass out, things happen at concerts, but something like that…” he continued, trailing off.
He continued: “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 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.”
Travis Scott had been criticised for his aggressive stage shows, which had previously resulted in separate law suits.
Speaking to Charlamagne, the rapper insisted he had wanted to nurture a safe live community. He said: “You can only help what you can see and whatever you’re told, whenever they tell you to stop, you stop…”
“That’s 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. 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.”
He continued: “‘Raging’…there’s not a textbook definition. But in concerts we’ve grown it to be just the experience of fun. It’s not about just…harm. It’s not about that. It’s about letting go and having fun, help others and love each other.”
Watch the interview in full below.
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