Last week, a Texas grand jury declined to indict Travis Scott on criminal charges for his role in the 2021 Astroworld Festival tragedy. But his legal battles regarding the event are far from over.
With the release of his new album, Utopia, Scott attempted to temporarily put the pending case behind him. However, one song references the incident, which has reopen the devastating wounds for one of the Astroworld victim’s family. According to TMZ, lawyer Bob Hilliard, representing the family of the late Ezra Blount called out Scott for being insensitive.
“For an artist making his living with music, these are stunningly tone-deaf comments about this preventable tragedy that took so many lives and injured so many,” Blount told the outlet.
The stanza in question appears in Scott’s song “My Eyes,” where Scott rapped, “I replay them nights, and right by my side, all I see is a sea of people that ride with me / If they just knew what Scotty would do to jump off the stage and save him a child.”
Blount’s family believes the line is an attempt by Scott to reframe the public’s view of him. In December 2021, Scott sat down for an interview with Charlamagne Tha God to discuss the tragedy. “I went through something, and I feel like fans went through something, and people’s parents went through something, and it really hurts,” he said. “It hurts the community. It hurts the city. There’s been a lot of thoughts, a lot of feelings, a lot of grieving, and just trying to wrap my head around it.”
Since then, Scott hasn’t released any other public statement related to the 2021 Astroworld Festival.