When Travis Scott's highly anticipated album Astroworld dropped in August of 2018, everybody seemed to lose it. The amount of Sicko Mode memes I saw within 24 hours of it being released was insane enough. I have to admit, I do really like a lot of Travis Scott's songs. I especially liked most of the songs on Astroworld. I only went to one concert while I was in high school, so I thought that it would be a fun idea to go to a Travis Scott concert. Unfortunately, the experience did not live up to any of my expectations.
My friend and I arrived at the PNC Arena in Raliegh at around 6:30 PM, and we were supposed to be let into the venue at 7:00 p.m., since the concert was going to start at 7:30 PM. After maybe only 10 minutes of waiting in line, an automated voice bolted through the outdoor speakers and said something along the lines of: "Due to production issues, the concert has been delayed". The message repeated itself at least five or six times within the span of 15 minutes. There were at least 300+ visibly angry and frustrated people waiting outside in cold and rainy weather.
Two and a half hours had passed. We were still outside. At this point, people began to throw things at the door just to get someone's attention. These 'things' ranged from miscellaneous/different shaped signs to actual human bodies, and I'm not going to lie, it was really scary when people started randomly flinging big and dense signs across the crowd. It definitely was very dangerous and not safe at all. We weren't even in a line. Everyone was crowded in a huge messy pile, and there wasn't any room to move at all. It was quite clear that we were all agitated, tired, and confused.
At around 11 PM, after four and a half hours of waiting, we were finally let in the building. After going through security and figuring out where our seats were, we didn't actually sit down until 11:30 PM. Keep in mind, the concert was supposed to start at 7:30 PM.
The next hour was a blur because that's also how long Travis's set was. His opening acts didn't even come out. We had been sitting in our seats for maybe 10-15 minutes when the lights suddenly cut off and out came Travis! He rushed through a lot of his songs, and it was very obvious that the concert was going to be much shorter than it was supposed to be. Halfway through his set, Travis told the Raliegh crowd that we were going to get a free customized t-shirt, as well as tickets to his next concert in North Carolina. Well, he is coming to Charlotte on March 24th, and here I am four months later without the free t-shirt or tickets.
Since the Raliegh concert, Travis Scott has actually canceled a lot of other shows for seemingly no reason, and it has caused a lot of frenzy and anger from his fans. So, it saddens me to say that my trip to Astroworld was not worth any of the hype...
