AllHipHop

What Travis Scott Did Wasn’t ‘Moshing’ – It Was Assault

Travis Scott
By: Bernadette GiacomazzoCategory: Rumors

For context.

The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of AllHipHop.com

By now, we’re all well aware of the nature of the Astroworld tragedy that is promising to all but fully (and rightly) cancel Travis Scott for good. By now, we’ve all seen the horrific videos — the piles of bodies screaming for help, the frightened kids begging for the oblivious cameraman to stop the show, the ambulance lights plowing through the crowd to take away the dead and the injured.

There’s no need to repost what we’ve seen countless times before. Trauma p### is a genre that needs to die a slow and painful death, sooner rather than later, and no one needs to re-watch a bunch of young men and women screaming and begging for their lives. Go watch a World War II documentary or the Investigation Discovery channel if you need a violent fix.

And we’re also seeing countless tweets — from the usual suspects, either of the dusty hotep variety who insist that this is part of some Grand Conspiracy to initiate Travis Scott into some (non-existent) Satanic Illuminati cult that, somehow, is tied to the functionally illiterate Kylie Jenner, or the fanbois and the groupies desperate to put on a white cape and mount a white steed to defend Travis Scott, a celebrity whom they don’t know personally and who wouldn’t spit on them if they were on fire — insisting that what he was doing was just part of “mosh pit culture.”

I’m here to tell every last one of these people one thing: you’re all idiots. I’m sure that will make you mad, and I’m also sure that I sincerely don’t have a f### left to give about that.

For those of you who think otherwise: there are no “both sides” in this matter. People are dead, you half-witted fetal alcohol cases — people who didn’t need to be dead, and people who wouldn’t be dead but for the supreme failure of the concert promoter to provide adequate necessities for a safe and enjoyable concert, and the sociopathic lack of concern on behalf of Travis Scott to leave the audience with a pleasant experience.

Call me whatever you want for being so blunt. Just remember I’ve been called worse by better.

While I’m aware that I’m comfortably in the Gen X range, I’m also aware that getting older in an industry where far too many die young and starving and alone is a privilege and not a right. And, to be frank, those of us who made it to our age group alive and well and in one piece in the entertainment industry didn’t get to that age by being a bunch of idiots. Our intelligence and empathy extended to the mosh pit, too.

I write this to remind you that it was my generation who grew up in the throes of the mosh pit culture, and I assure you that there were rules in that sonofabitch. Contrary to the erroneous belief held by Travis Scott and his minions that the mosh pit was a rage-fest that was little more than an excuse to beat the s### out of each other, the reality is, there were rules in that sonofabitch.

I’ll allow this Twitter thread to explain it to you in such a way that doesn’t involve the incandescent rage I’m currently feeling at the blatant stupidity exhibited by this marginally talented “artist.”

I cannot help but remember when the Roskilde tragedy happened through no fault of Pearl Jam’s — and lead singer Eddie Vedder stopped the show and openly wept on stage, begging people to stop and save those who couldn’t be saved, and how the community came together as a whole to heal, to love and be loved, and to be more mindful going forward.

Of course, if you ask a certain group of folks about this, they’ll tell you that Eddie Vedder was “weak,” feminine, and a p#### — to which I have no other response than to tell you, with all due disrespect, to go m######### yourselves, now and forever, for that ignorance.

As I said, I’m sure I’m going to get a backlash from the usual suspects who don’t bother to read the f###### article to comprehend but only choose to pick and choose what they want to read with the intent of answering back. And as I said, I sincerely don’t care. My job is, to tell the truth — your job is to comprehend it.

And I cannot make this any clearer: it is not just rock’n’roll artists that understand what mosh pit culture really is, either. (For some reason, the “default” setting in rock’n’roll is cis white guys, even though rock’n’roll was and remains a Black art form, and there’s no shortage of Black artists — from Jimi Hendrix to Slash and Arthur Lee of Love, from Fire from the Gods to Fishbone and King’s X — that are revered within the pantheon. Also, I shouldn’t have to say this, but I’m going to anyway: “skinheads” and other racists aren’t welcome in our shows, and any attempt by them to penetrate our mosh pit sanctum usually ends with their brains on the concrete.)

There are countless rap artists — the most notable example being Playboi Carti, who notably & honorably ceased performing while begging his audience to stop acting like a####### — who get that if nothing else, a concert is a safe space to express one’s true self and a rare chance to enjoy the music live and in living color, and nobody benefits if anybody gets hurt in the process.

People pass out at concerts. People sometimes get hurt at concerts. People even sometimes die at concerts — but in 99.99% of those cases, it’s through an “act of God” or a freak accident, not due to a violent weirdo who needs validation in the form of injured and dead bodies, who otherwise wouldn’t get any sort of props were it not for the notoriety of the needlessly violent nature of his shows.

There’s no other way of putting this than bluntly: what Travis Scott did at Astroworld wasn’t “mosh pit” culture. Not a single one of us who started our entertainment careers in rock’n’roll recognize what Gen Z is calling a “mosh pit”…because it’s not a mosh pit.

What Travis Scott did at Astroworld wasn’t an “Illuminati sacrifice” or a “Satanic ritual.” I was raised Catholic — I promise, Satanists don’t incorporate Hieronymous Bosch imagery in their rituals. And as for “Illuminati,” the very definition means “enlightened ones” — have you heard Travis Scott talk? Does this man sound like one of the world’s great thinkers, one who would understand the syncretic secrets of the universe? C’mon, fam. He can’t even perform live without a machine making him sound somewhat tolerable. Do you really think The Powers That Be are going to entrust higher-level thoughts to someone who can’t read above a third-grade reading level? Use the Third Eye you allegedly have decalcified to think, please.

What Travis Scott did at Astroworld was reckless, irresponsible, and straight-up assault.

It was a sociopathic disregard for human life. It was raw violence, brutal and unfiltered.

And he deserves to pay, and dearly, for his actions.