Travis Scott gave his first interview addressing the Astroworld tragedy on Thursday, speaking with Charlagmagne tha God in a 51-minute sitdown.
While the rapper used the conversation to communicate his feelings about the situation, festival victims viewed it quite differently. According to TMZ, an attorney for one of the casualties, 21-year-old Axel Acosta, thinks Scott is not holding himself accountable for the devastating incident and is instead blaming everyone but himself.
“Axel Acosta and the many others killed or injured are the victims,” the Acosta family’s attorney Tony Buzbee told the outlet. “Travis Scott, his entourage, handlers, promoters, managers, hangers on and everyone else who enable him are the problem. Everything that Travis Scott has done or said since ten people died and hundreds of others were injured at his concert has been lawyer-driven and calculated to shift blame from him to someone else.”
The Acosta family is one of many that have filed lawsuits against Scott, 30. Buzbee is suing the rapper for $750 million on the Acostas’ behalf. Buzbee doesn’t believe Travis didn’t see what was happening in the crowd.
“He now says he had an earpiece in, and was not told what was going on in the crowd. That raises the question: Did he have an earpiece in his eye? Why did he purposely ignore the death and mayhem occurring literally feet from him?”
In his extensive conversation with Charlamagne, Scott said he had no knowledge of the mass casualty event as it was transpiring during his set. “You wanna make sure fans get the proper attention they need. And anytime I could see anything like that, I did. I stopped it, like, a couple times to just make sure everybody’s okay,” he said. “And I really go off the fans’ energy as a collective, call and response. I just didn’t hear that. You know, I got music, I got my in-ears.”
Buzbee said Scott is playing victim and that the interview “further exacerbates the pain of those that lost loved ones.” The lawyer stated that “Axel Acosta’s family doesn’t want to hear Travis Scott’s excuses; excuses do not assuage their grief and pain.”
The attorney for the family of 23-year-old Rudy Peña, another casualty of the festival, had a similar reaction. Valerie Cortinas Fisher told TMZ “as far as...Rudy’s family goes, it didn’t heal them, no.” She said Scott’s conversation “seemed to kind of be an exercise in expressing his feelings to the public.”
When Charlamagne asked Scott what he wanted families grieving after the fatal festival to know, he answered, “I’ll say to them that I’m always here and that, you know, I’m in this with you guys and I love you and I’ll always be there to help you guys heal through this. … It’s not just, like, a right-now thing, it’s a forever thing. These people that came to the show, they are my family and I’ve always had that connection to the people that listen to the music or come to my shows.”
In further aftermath of the interview, Scott’s attorney Ed McPherson told TMZ his client was adamant about having the public conversation.
