‘We want rage’: 2015 video shows Travis Scott hyping crowd at Lollapalooza
2015 video shows Travis Scott hyping crowd at Lollapalooza
A 2015 video of Travis Scott’s Lollapalooza performance in Chicago shows him inciting his audience as they surge forward, chanting "we want rage" before his set ended amid reports of him cussing out security and telling fans to jump the barricades.
Santa Monica - Footage from a 2015 Travis Scott performance at the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago shows the rapper calling to his audience, chanting "We want rage," as the crowd appears to sway amid a surge of people.
In the video, Scott can be heard yelling at the audience "We want rage," as fans can be seen jumping over the barricade separating the stage from the audience.
The scene echoes recent footage of the deadly 2021 Astroworld Festival in Houston where eight people — between the ages of 14 and 27 — were killed during a crowd surge. Hundreds more were injured and at least 13 remained hospitalized as of Sunday, according to authorities.
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Roughly 50,000 people were in attendance at the Friday night show where swaths of concert attendees pushed toward the stage at NRG Park during Scott’s performance.
People in the crowd reported lots of pushing and shoving during the performances leading up to Scott’s set — which is normal at his shows. He’s often encouraged fans to bypass security and rush the stage, but none of those previous situations resulted in fatalities.
Following the tragic incident, videos began to surface from previous Scott performances highlighting a dangerous theme, including from the 2015 Lollapalooza show.
In 2017, Scott was arrested after he encouraged fans to bypass security and rush the stage, leaving a security guard, a police officer and several others injured during a concert in Arkansas. In a separate incident, he was sentenced to one year of court supervision after pleading guilty to reckless conduct charges stemming from the 2015 incident at Lollapalooza.
At the time, Chicago officials said Scott encouraged fans to vault security barricades. No one was injured.
Scott’s high-energy performances are known for being chaotic shows with concertgoers encouraged to take part in a raucous nature involving mosh pits, crowd surfing and stage diving. These incidents have been known to be part-and-parcel of the Grammy-nominated artist’s shows, but Friday night’s performance went terribly wrong.
"Travis Scott’s whole aesthetic is about rebellion," HipHopDX editor-in-chief Trent Clark told the Associated Press. Clark has attended several of Scott’s performances. "The shows have a lot of raging. With the death of punk rock, hip-hop has indeed adopted and patterned the new generation of mosh pits. It’s not uncommon to see a lot of crowding and raging or complete wild behavior at a Travis Scott show."
RELATED: Petition to remove Travis Scott from Coachella lineup gaining support
In a tweet posted Saturday, Scott said he was "absolutely devastated by what took place last night." He pledged to work "together with the Houston community to heal and support the families in need."
Scott was a scheduled headliner for the Day N Vegas Festival next weekend but the rapper was "too distraught" to perform after Astroworld, according to reports.
RELATED: Travis Scott, Live Nation face more than a dozen lawsuits over deadly Astroworld event
Any other performances involving Scott could come under some scrutiny for crowd control measures and other safety concerns.
In the wake of the deadly Astroworld festival, a petition calling for the removal of Travis Scott from the lineup of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which the rapper is set to headline in April, began gaining support.
More than a dozen lawsuits have been filed against Scott, Live Nation and others on behalf of concertgoers at the Astroworld festival — with more pending, according to attorneys representing multiple concertgoers.
On Monday, attorney Ben Crump filed a lawsuit in Harris County, Texas on behalf of concertgoer Illhan Mohamud against Live Nation. Mohamud is seeking $1 million in damages for negligence and emotional distress.
"When the concert started, Plaintiff was in the middle of the crowd when suddenly and without warning, she became trapped in a deadly crowd surge," a court document said. "Crowd surges are extremely dangerous events that can occur at large concerts when too many people are packed together into too small of a space."
Investigators are expected to examine the design of safety barriers and the use of crowd control in determining what led to a crush of spectators at a Houston music festival that left eight people dead and hundreds more injured.
Authorities planned to use videos, witness interviews and a review of concert procedures to figure out what went wrong during Scott’s performance.
No matter where the investigation ultimately leads, tragedies like the one at the Astroworld Festival have been happening for a long time. In 1979, 11 people died in a scramble to enter a Cincinnati, Ohio, concert by The Who. At a soccer stadium in England, a human crush in 1989 led to nearly 100 deaths. In 2015, a collision of two crowds at the hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia caused more than 2,400 deaths, based on an Associated Press count of media reports and officials’ comments.
This story was reported from Los Angeles. The Associated Press contributed.