Travis Scott is a rapper who makes mainstream music. He is known for being involved with Kylie Jenner as well as the father of her daughter, Stormi. Travis Scott has produced songs such as Goosebumps, SICKO MODE, etc. Recently, he had a music festival called Astroworld on November 5th and 6th, and everyone was extremely excited about it. However, that excitement turned into horror and terror. Astroworld left 9 dead and many others injured. The cause of this was an insanely packed crowd with people getting trampled during the show. And the biggest controversy surrounding it is that Travis Scott continued performing while people were yelling about the corpses being on the ground. This of course led to social media outrage, with people posting Tik Toks and videos from the Astroworld festival, making comments about how Travis Scott should have stopped the performance when he first heard the yelling of corpses on the ground. Others shared their condolences to the families of the victims. 

According to Travis Scott’s attorney in a CNN report, “‘Understand that when he’s up on the stage, and he has flash pots going off around him and he has an ear monitor that has music blasting through it and his own voice — he can’t hear anything, he can’t see anything..’” This could add to the idea of Travis Scott not having any idea of what is happening below. After this report was released, it raised questions over who was truly to blame for the incident and the deaths of those 9 people. However, the same article reported that local police officials spoke to the production team and ordered them to stop the show. However, the show continued. In a concert plan obtained by investigators, only the festival director and the executive producer are the only ones with the power to stop the show, although the festival director and the executive producer are not part of the rapper’s crew. 

The causes of death have not yet been determined. However, it is possible that the issue of overcrowding and everyone being shoved in together leads to people being crushed, people being tripped, and trampled over. There are reports of concertgoers administering CPR to those who passed out in the crowd. It’s possible that there could have been more fatalities if people were not willing to help out over the sound of autotune.

There are examples of singers who have stopped the show to help someone in the crowd. For example, early on in Billie Eilish’s career, she was about to perform her hit song when the party’s over, when she heard someone in the audience yell about a girl passing out. Billie stopped the show to check on the girl and ask if she was okay. RuPaul’s Drag Race star and singer Adore Delano purposefully put a show on hold to call medical professionals after a concert goer passed out. And one iconic example is when the late singer Kurt Cobain stopped a show  and personally shoved away a man attempting to sexually assault a female. This Astroworld event possibly has tarnished Travis Scott’s reputation, and has caused outrage all over social media.

At the end of the day, there’s no clear idea of who is to blame for the events at Astroworld. However, it’s important to look at it and hopefully learn from these. For example, better crowd control, better concert etiquette, etc. And those who worked on the production teams of Astroworld should know that when something very dangerous is occuring, the show has to stop. 9 people were lost in the events of Astroworld as of Wednesday. We don’t know if or when we’ll lose another victim.

The list of victims are as follows:

Mirza Baig

Rodolfo Peña

Madison Dubiski

Franco Patiño

Jacob Jurinke

John Hilgert

Axel Acosta Avila

Brianna Rodriguez

Bharti Shahani

The youngest victim was 14 and the oldest victim was 27.