Travis Scott has officially spoken out in his first interview since the tragedy at Astroworld festival, during which a crowd surge resulted in ten deaths and hundreds of injuries. The Houston-born rapper has been remaining silent as lawsuits continue to mount against him, the festival’s organizers, and other performers, and on Thursday morning, he sat down with The Breakfast Club’s Charlamagne Tha God to speak about the tragedy.
In the first moments of the fifty-minute interview, Travis tells Charlamagne that, in the last few days, he’s felt a “rollercoaster of emotions.”
“I’ve been on different types of emotions, an emotional rollercoaster, I mean,” said Travis. “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.”
Travis Scott performing at Astroworld Festival 2021 — Image via HNHH
Charlamagne went on to ask the rapper what his intention is with the interview, to which Travis explained that he doesn’t have any intention per se, aside from communicating with the public.
“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?” he 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. It’s been such a time and I’ve been trying to just really figure things out.”
Travis says that he had some hesitation about doing the interview because of the lawsuits he’s facing but he says it’s “not about that.”
“You’re an artist, you’re whoever people think you are at the end of the day you’re a human being and you have emotions, you wanna communicate those emotions and try and find the best way to communicate,” he said.
The rapper says he’s been coping with the aftermath of the festival by taking time to himself, but he realizes that “no one will be” his voice and he needed to speak up.
Watch the entire interview between Travis Scott and Charlamagne Tha God down below.