Footage of Teyana Taylor stopping a recent show to make sure her audience was okay went viral this week.
The clip would not usually have made such waves, but following the backlash after Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival deaths, it was used as an example of how an artist should treat their fans.
Speaking to TMZ, Taylor says her actions in the video are nothing out of the ordinary. She also says that there is footage of Scott doing the same thing.
“I’ve always been that way. There’s plenty of videos of me stopping my shows to help my fans,” she said.
The person behind the camera then accused Scott of inciting his crowds and causing riots.
“There’s videos of him stopping his shows,” she replied. “It’s just, people are choosing whatever video they are choosing to choose to make it look as if he’s not, but I’ve seen videos of him stopping the show.”
Taylor was determined not to be pulled into the ongoing drama.
“At the end of the day, I seen the video of him stopping the show, I think it’s very important for all artists to take precautions, proper precautions. But, also, the staffing as well. It’s not just the artists,” she said. “With Travis, he has a large crowd so we can’t expect him to see every single person. I think going forward, making sure everybody involved is taking the proper precautions.”
On Wednesday, Scott’s attorney released a statement, addressing conflicting reports
“There has been multiple finger-pointing, much of which has been by city officials, who have sent inconsistent messages and have backtracked from original statements,” Edwin F. McPherson said per TMZ.
“Houston Police Chief Troy Finner was quoted in the New York Times as saying ‘You cannot just close when you got 50,000 and over 50,000 individuals. We have to worry about rioting, riots, when you have a group that’s that young.’ Yet, just a short time later, Chief Finner states the responsibility to stop the show falls on Travis. It was reported that the Operations Plan designated that only the festival director and executive producers have authority to stop the show, neither of which is part of Travis’s crew. This also runs afoul of HPD’s own previous actions when it shut down the power and sound at this very festival when the performance ran over 5 minutes back in 2019. Investigations should start proceeding over finger-pointing so that together, we can identify exactly what transpired and how we can prevent anything like this from happening again.”
