Travis Scott joined Charlamagne tha God for his first interview since a crowd surge incident that occurred during his Astroworld Festival performance left eight people dead and hundreds injured.
Scott sat down a nearly hour-long discussion shared to Charlamagne’s YouTube channel on December 9, in which the rapper denied knowing that people had died at the concert until the press conference that occurred after his set.
“I didn’t know the exact details until minutes before the press conference until I figured out exactly what happened,” he said, adding, “And even at that moment you’re like, ‘Wait, what?’”
“People pass out, things happen at concerts, but something like that…” he added, trailing off.
Charlamagne went on to ask Scott if he heard cries for help from the crowd, as concertgoers have said they heard screaming every time the music stopped.
“Nah man, and you know, it’s so crazy because I’m that artist too. Anytime you can hear something like that, you want to stop the show,” Scott replied. “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.”
Scott went on to list the combination of things that would make it hard for him to hear any distress from
“You can only help what you can see and whatever you’re told, whenever they tell you to stop, you stop,” he said.
They went on to discuss “raging” culture, Charlamagne pressing the rapper on the fact that it contributed to multiple deaths and has received backlash following the Astroworld tragedy.
“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,” he said. “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.
The rapper went on to note that there is not a “textbook definition” for the word raging, adding, “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 above, via YouTube.