Travis Scott says he is constantly thinking about the fatalities caused by the crowd surge at his November 2021 Astroworld Festival in Houston, Texas.
It was the rapper’s third annual two-day music festival, where at least 50,000 people had gathered at the site of the city’s former Six Flags park.
When Scott, 32, appeared on stage at around 9pm on the first night, the audience surged towards the stage, leaving attendees as young as nine years old crushed underfoot. 10 people in total died with hundreds more injured.
Two years after the fateful tragedy, the “Meltdown” rapper remembered the “devastating” moment in a new interview with GQ.
“I always think about it. Those fans were like my family. You know, I love my fans to the utmost,” Scott said.
“That moment for families, for the city, you know, it was devastating. And when it came to making, like even finishing the album… I got back into it probably like, I don’t know, months and months and months after.”
Describing his mental state as “overly devasted” in the aftermath of the tragedy, he said: “The idea of just even getting back into music, working on music and just even getting into that, was therapeutic of being able to channel some of the energy into production and sounds and finishing it.”
Astroworld Festival 2021— (2021)
In his first interview months after the horrific accident, Scott said: “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,” he added.
Scott recalled that it wasn’t until the press conference proceeding the show that he had learnt that people had died. “Even after the show, you’re just kind of hearing things, but I didn’t know the exact details. And even at that moment you’re like, ‘Wait, what?’ You just went through something,” he said.
In the summer, a grand jury decided against indicting the rapper and the others involved in the festival’s planning, including its chief of security John Junnell and festival director Brett Silberstein.
“In this instance, the grand jury of the 228th District Court of Harris County found that no crime did occur, that no single individual was criminally responsible,” District Attorney Kim Ogg announced in June.
“While waiting patiently for the District Attorney’s decision to not file charges, Travis Scott has been inaccurately and wrongly singled out, despite stopping the show three separate times and being unaware of the events as they were unfolding,” Scott’s spokesperson Ted Anastasiou told CNN.
“Now that this chapter is closed, we hope for the government efforts to focus on what is most important – stopping future heartbreaking tragedies like Astroworld from ever occurring again.”
