Comebacks were dark, loud – and short.
Thirty-seven minutes into Travis Scott’s Saturday night headlining performance at this weekend’s Rolling Loud California festival, his audio suddenly cut out in the middle of his signature song “Sicko Mode.” People near the main stage (and their monitors) could still hear him, as could those watching the festival’s popular live stream, so Scott finished “Sicko Mode” and a snippet of his hit song “Goosebumps” before leaving the stage .
But for most of the tens of thousands at Rolling Loud, held on the Hollywood Park lot adjacent to Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium, the 31-year-old rapper, known for his raucous sound and boisterous delivery, suddenly became a man bouncing around in virtual silence.
“I wish I could do more, but they’re letting me go,” Scott said as he left — a way of describing a strict 11 p.m. got behind schedule.
It was a somewhat devastating end to Scott’s first full concert in the US since his ill-fated Astroworld festival in Houston in late 2021, when a mob killed 10 people and injured hundreds more. Scott, for whom attracting audiences is a critical part of his act but claims he was unaware viewers on Astroworld were in trouble, has been named in multiple death-related lawsuits, leading to a congressional investigation against the concert promoter Live Nation.
After being shunned by many in the music industry, including reportedly being kicked from Coachella’s 2022 lineup, Scott has slowly been making his way back to the A-list status he once enjoyed, though he’s not taking it easy Done: Last week, a sound engineer at a New York nightclub claimed that Scott attacked him during a DJ set and destroyed $12,000 worth of equipment. (Scott’s lawyer called the incident a “misunderstanding” and said he was “convinced that when all is said and done, Travis will be proven right.”)
But in Rolling Loud – widely heralded as the world’s largest hip-hop festival, with events in a growing number of cities and countries – Scott found an enthusiastic partner for his comeback. This year he was booked to record Rolling Loud shows in Portugal, Germany and Thailand; According to Variety, the company paid Scott between $1.6 million and $1.8 million for Saturday’s performance in LA
Rolling Loud California ran Friday through Sunday in the SoFi parking lot and also featured Playboi Carti, Kodak Black, Trippie Redd, Lil Baby, and Tyga among dozens of other acts; Lil Wayne brought out Nicki Minaj for an unannounced performance on Saturday, while Don Toliver surprised fans with a Justin Bieber cameo during his set. Like all Rolling Loud events, the festival wanted to capture the experience of hip-hop as experienced by the youngest fans, for whom the genre’s slogan is rage, mosh and enlightenment.
Scott is something of a pioneer in her eyes, who released his major label debut eight years ago – an eternity in rap time. (The MC’s latest LP, Astroworld, came out in 2018; lately he’s been teasing the imminent release of a sequel called Utopia.) And here he was happy to live up to his role as king of the world, well. , even if he stopped inciting the wild behavior he’d asked for before.
Dressed in dark clothing and a ball cap, his eyes hidden behind a futuristic-looking mask, Scott screamed his way through songs like “Highest in the Room,” “Stargazing,” and “Butterfly Effect,” his heavily processed vocals skimming over pounding pounding beats , wrapped in dark synthesizer textures. Low stage lighting and a hardworking smoke machine gave the show a vaguely apocalyptic feel, only enhanced by fireworks that sometimes shot pillars of fire into the sky.
Short as it was, the performance was effective in demonstrating the state of a valuable brand unaltered by controversy. But it also reminded you that hip-hop, which has never evolved as quickly as it does today, evolved in Scott’s absence.
Playboi Carti, 26, whose own performance was temporarily halted by Rolling Loud organizers after fans reportedly jumped a barricade, played the headliner’s slot, the aggro-rap sound that drove Rolling Loud to one, on Friday night Art gothic-nü-metal dominate extremely , screaming almost unintelligibly as an electric guitarist rips out frantic but strangely elegant solos. Compared to Carti’s truly outrageous performance, Scott almost felt old-fashioned.
Source: LA Times