Travis Scott concerts: fun, energetic but chaotic | WIVT
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LOS ANGELES (AP) – Travis Scott’s energetic performances are known to be chaotic and fun shows with spectators encouraged to participate in a raucous nature involving mosh pits, crowd surfing and stage diving.
Welcome to Scott’s Astroworld Festival – where spectators can become rebels themselves.
Tragically, the Grammy-nominated rapper’s energetic performance turned deadly this time after at least eight people – aged 14 to 27 – were killed in a crowd surge at his music festival in Houston on Friday. evening. A large group of the 50,000 in attendance marched to the stage at NRG Park as a timer clicked to start the performance before the chaotic scene began to ignite.
People in the crowd reported a lot of jostling during the performances leading up to Scott’s set – which is normal during his shows. He often encouraged fans to bypass security and rush the scene, but none of these previous situations resulted in fatalities.
âThe whole aesthetic of Travis Scott revolves around rebellion,â said Trent Clark, editor-in-chief of HipHopDX, who attended several of his performances. âThe shows have a lot of rage. With the death of punk rock, hip-hop has indeed adopted and shaped the new generation of mosh pits. It’s not uncommon to see a lot of crowds and rage or completely wild behavior at a Travis Scott show. ”
Scott is an eight-time Grammy nominated rapper who is music’s tallest young star. The Houston-born musician founded his festival in 2018 on the heels of his chart-topping album “Astroworld”, which was led by the contagious song “Sicko Mode”. He also has a 3-year-old daughter with Kylie Jenner, who announced in September that she was pregnant with their second child.
âTravis Scott is legendary in the hip-hop community for his beyond high energy performances where he really tries to piss off the crowd,â said Noah Shachtman, editor of Rolling Stone. “It makes for some really funny shows and does some scary incidents.”
In a tweet posted on Saturday, Scott said he was “absolutely devastated by what happened last night”. He is committed to working “with the Houston community to heal and support families in need.”
No matter where the investigation leads, tragedies like that of the Astroworld Festival have been happening for a long time. In 1979, 11 people died in the rush to attend a The Who concert in Cincinnati, Ohio. At a football stadium in England, a human crash in 1989 left nearly 100 people dead. In 2015, a collision of two crowds during the hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia left more than 2,400 people dead, according to an Associated Press tally of media reports and comments from authorities.
But with Scott already having trouble for the previous two shows, Shachtman believes the rapper will get a “hard second look.”
In 2017, Scott was arrested after encouraging fans to bypass security and rush onto the stage, leaving a security guard, police officer and several others injured during a concert in Arkansas. In a separate incident, he was sentenced to one year of judicial supervision after pleading guilty to reckless driving charges stemming from a 2015 Chicago incident at the Lollapalooza music festival.
At the time, Chicago officials said Scott encouraged fans to go through security barricades. However, no one was injured.
âIn terms of energy, he wants the energy he gives out on stage to be reciprocal to the audience, almost out of challenge,â said Julian Kimble, who wrote a concert review of Scott’s 2018 performance Astroworld for the Washington Post. He called the rapper one of the most electrifying artists he has seen.
âI saw him say to people like, ‘Don’t listen to security. Forget about security. This is for all of you. It’s for the fans, âhe continued. âAs for last night, that’s an example of how things can go wrong. There is a lot of neglect at all levels. I don’t think there is a single villain or culprit. It’s a radical structural failure with what happened.
Shachtman has said he hopes the tragedy will help change Scott’s approach to his show. He enjoys the rapper’s performances but wants a safer atmosphere where people can still have fun – especially for those who want to have fun at live shows during the pandemic.
âI would expect these to be increased measures to make sure viewers can have a good time, but do so without getting killed,â said Shachtman, who grew up with punk rock music. hardcore new yorker. He said he was no stranger to mosh pits, but added that “there is a big difference between a mosh pit, even a giant, and a life threatening situation.”
Scott is headlining the Day N Vegas Festival next weekend. But any performance involving Scott could come under scrutiny for crowd control measures and other safety concerns.
âConcert promoters pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the security of private and public (events),â Shachtman said. âIt has to be deployed properly. Or, we’ll see another such incident.
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