Travis Scott Speaks With Charlamagne Tha God In First Interview After the Astroworld Tragedy

Photo Credit: YouTube Charlamagne Tha God

Travis Scott gave a public interview for the first time after the Astroworld tragedy, speaking with Charlamagne Tha God.

The hour-long interview is currently available on YouTube, with the two rappers having a candid conversation about what happened at Astroworld. Charlamagne asks Scott when he learned that the concert was becoming a mass-casualty event. Scott says he was unaware until a few moments before the press conference declaring it.

“Even after the show, 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?’” The rapper says he didn’t hear shouts from the crowd to stop the show.

“It’s so crazy because I’m that artist too – like any time you can hear something like that, you want to stop the show,” Scott says. “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.”

Charlamagne also asks Travis Scott in the interview to address the ‘rage culture’ that has become a part of his live concerts in recent years.

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In a Reddit thread from 2019, one new Scott fan asks the old guard to explain why they call themselves ‘ragers.’ “Because Trav is the best live performer and his concerts are literally insane,” one fan writes. “You can’t go to a concert and not rage. If you don’t leave with blood on you, then did you even go?”

“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 told Charlamagne in addressing his rage culture. “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.”

Scott places the blame on ‘professionals’ later on in the conversation, too. He says artists must trust the professionals to make sure the audience is safe while the concert is going on. “I just control what I can on the stage, and then you have the professionals to control what they can in the crowd.”

Scott never mentions who these ‘professionals’ to blame are exactly, either. He never mentions Live Nation and ScoreMore, the promoters of the concert. “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.”