WATCH: Travis Scott Plays Fortnite

The Houston rapper has revolutionized the dynamics of the concert experience during COVID-19

May 14, 2020May 14, 2020 Ron Hart 0 Comments Astronomical Tour, Fortnite, Hip-hop, Kid Cudi, Travis Scott, video games

If you’ve read my recent stuff about hip-hop, you already know how I think Travis Scott is pretty much the Robert Fripp of trap music. We know that much is true.

However, this kid reached God status thanks to his weeklong tour through the battle royal video game Fortnite. As a parent of a Roblox friend, both my wife and I have been pretty squeamish about our son’s growing interest in the game. I will admit the action figures created from these characters are better than anything on the market right now in terms of articulation and gear. But for a kid who is on the fast track to fully ditching his toys by his upcoming 8th birthday, we are doing our best at educating him on the dangers of these games as cesspools of bullying and undercover creeps.

But Scott, who joins the likes of American Football and Soccer Mommy in taking their live shows to the community gaming multiverse, completely revolutionizes the interactive nature of Fortnite during his 10-minute Fortnite set.

Screenshot from Travis Scott concert inside Fortnite

How it worked was these “Astronomical” shows took place at different times on different servers from April 23 to 25, including two viewings in The Americas. What’s cooler is that it was a totally in-game experience, where players were able to travel around to different areas of the game with this titanic Travis Scott graphic, who arrived by giant asteroid. The show also premiered a new Travis Scott song called “The Scotts” with his art-rap forebearer Kid Cudi, which wound up breaking Spotify’s 2020 record for most streamed track in its first day of release in 2020 with 7.45 million streams and the gaming event reportedly generated 45 million views.

“Our main goal was to translate Travis’ larger than life aesthetic and dynamic live performances to a digital, global audience while simultaneously launching new verticals,” David Stromberg, Scott’s manager at Cactus Jack, told Pollstar. “Basically we wanted to create an opportunity for millions of kids around the world to experience possibly their first concert and for core fans to participate in a new, innovative format,” Scott’s manager David Stromberg told Pollstar in their news item on the concert. “Debuting a song in the game and releasing it day and date was another aspect that hasn’t really been done before at this level. To see ‘THE SCOTTS’ debut at #1 was amazing proof of concept. We also got a lot of really interesting data from the whole initiative.”

Check it out below. So cool. This kid earned that Rush T-shirt he wore at the 2019 Grammys.