Travis Scott has addressed the Astroworld Festival tragedy in a new interview with Charlamagne tha God.
At the top of the 51-minute discussion, the Utopia artist—who’s among those named in multiple lawsuits in connection with the fatal 2021 edition of the Houston festival—said he’s been on an “emotional rollercoaster” in recent days.
“I’ve been on different types of emotions, an emotional rollercoaster, I mean,” he said. “It gets so hard because, you know, I always feel connected with my fans. I went through something and I feel like fans went through something and people’s parents went through something. And it really hurts. It hurts the community, it hurts the city. There’s been a lot of thoughts, a lot of feelings, a lot of grieving, and just trying to wrap my head around it.”
Around the 1:12 mark, Charlamagne asked Scott to explain his “intention” for the interview, which comes a month after multiple fans died on the first day of the Houston-set festival.
“I don’t personally have an intention, I just feel like something happened and I feel like it’s just, I needed a way to kinda like communicate, you know?” Scott said. “One, families are grieving. There’s fans that experienced something, there’s fans that came to the show. I’ve always been that person to always see things through with the people that share experiences with me. … I’ve been trying to just really figure things out.”
As for whether there was any hesitation regarding the aforementioned lawsuits, Scott shared his opinion that it’s “not about that” but is instead about communicating his emotions. Elsewhere, Scott referred to his fans as “family” and pushed back against those equating the concept of “raging” with intentional harm. Scott also said he didn’t begin to learn the severity of what transpired during the Nov. 5 festival performance until “minutes before” an initial press conference from local authorities.
When asked deeper into the interview whether he felt a sense of responsibility for the events of Nov. 5, Scott said his responsibility lies in figuring out what went wrong at this year’s Astroworld and how to prevent these types of incidents at future shows.
See more from Travis Scott and Charlamagne tha God up top. On Thursday morning’s Breakfast Club, Charlamagne and his co-hosts took calls from listeners about the interview:
Ultimately, 10 attendees of the 2021 edition of the NRG Park-set festival died, including nine-year-old Ezra Blount. The child’s family, as previously reported, later denied Scott’s offer of covering funeral expenses. Earlier this week, Scott was reported to have denied the allegations (negligence among them) in several lawsuits filed against him in connection with the deadly festival.
