Here’s where we are so far in the bad month local rap god/aspiring WWE heel Travis Scott has been having lately:
It all started a couple of Tuesdays ago when Netflix reminded people of Scott’s darkest hour with Trainwreck: The Astroworld Tragedy, the latest entry in the streamer’s Trainwreck documentary series. This installment takes you back to the first night of Scott’s Astroworld Festival in 2021, when Scott’s headlining performance resulted in a fatal crowd crush and ten people – aged 9 to 27 – dying from compressive asphyxiation.
The doc, which includes interviews with attendees who survived the crush but lost a loved one, basically echoes what a Houston grand jury found in 2023: no single person was responsible for the deaths. Scott is just as much to blame as Live Nation, the live-event empire that teamed up with Scott in (poorly) organizing that year’s festival. (As someone who attended the first two, casualty-free Astroworld fests, I can say things were a lot less clumsy and dangerous before Live Nation showed up.)
For local rap enthusiast/podcaster Donnie Houston, Trainwreck gave him what he already suspected. “I feel like, after watching the documentary – and with what I felt before – this thing was bigger than one person,” says Houston. “It was bigger than Travis Scott.”
If that wasn’t enough for our boy, Pusha T of the Virginia rap duo Clipse has been making his feelings known about La Flame — and it’s not good. Last week, he and his twin brother Malice dropped the single “So Be It,” from their upcoming Let God Sort Em Out album. During one verse, Pusha throws a lot of lyrical daggers at Scott:
You cried in front of me, you died in front of me
Calabasas took your b***h and your pride in front of me
Heard Utopia had moved right up the street
And her lip gloss was poppin', she ain't need you to eat
The 'net gon' call it the way that they see it
But I got the video, I can share and A.E. it
Pusha has also been making the press rounds, explaining his beef with Scott. It goes back to “Meltdown,” a track from Scott’s 2023 album Utopia. The song features a guest verse from Drake, who takes shots at former foe Pusha and longtime collaborator Pharrell Williams. “I melt down the chains that I bought from your boss, give a f**k about all of that heritage s**t,” he raps, referring to the jewelry the part-time Houstonian bought through Pharrell’s Joopiter auction site.
Pusha took umbrage with the verse, especially since Scott flew to Paris to play “Meltdown” and other tracks for WIlliams (who produced a track on Utopia). “He interrupted a session,” Pusha said in a GQ interview. “He sees me and Malice there. He's like, ‘Oh, man, everybody's here,’ he's smiling, laughing, jumping around, doing his f***ing monkey dance. We weren't into the music, but he wanted to play it, wanted to film [us and Pharrell listening to it]. And then a week later you hear ‘Meltdown,’ which he didn’t play. He played the song, but not [Drake’s verse].”
Pusha also calls out Scott for his lack of loyalty. “I don't play how y'all play. To me, that really was just like…he's a whore. He's a whore.”
While Pusha has been doubling down on the Scott hate, the social-media world is waiting for Scott to respond — and possibly set off another, high-profile rap feud. Even though Bun B recently said he believes Scott will most likely have something to say soon, Donnie thinks this beef has already run its course. “I expect something like this, honestly, to blow over,” he says. “Like, I don't see this turning into anything nowhere near the magnitude of a Kendrick and Drake situation.”
Even with all the haterade surrounding him, Houston predicta Scott will rise above it. “I think this documentary dropping may have, you know, reminded some people of some things that may provoke certain feelings,” he says. “But I think Travis is gonna be alright, man. Like, the kid's a megastar, younowhamsayin. I think that the people that follow him genuinely follow him. And even if he loses a couple people here and there, his following is so strong and so tied in with everything he has going on, and he'll be alright.”
