On Saturday night, “We want Travis!” chants boomed through Target Center. A roller coaster foreshadowed what was to come, as hip-hop echoed throughout the giant Minneapolis venue.
The evening saw some of the largest names in hip-hop roll through the frigid north as Sheck Wes and Gunna warmed up the crowd with club bangers like “Mo Bamba” and “Drip Too Hard.” The restless crowd was robbed of another opener, Trippie Redd, after the SoundCloud rapper dropped out of the tour days before its Minneapolis stop.
Make no mistake, though — nobody really cared. The night was all about the most colossal hip-hop artist of the times: Travis Scott.
As hypebeasts repping Supreme x The North Face puff jackets and Palace hoodies stood in 20-minute lines to snag the icy tour merchandise, other swagged-out attendees ran through the venue’s halls to position themselves for the first beat drop.
Lights dimmed as a dark, twisted rendition of a retro Six Flags AstroWorld commercial was projected onto the stage backdrop. The film’s music blended with the obvious opening track, “STARGAZING,” and the kid himself was off to the races.
“I just want all of ya’ll to take this ride with me,” Scott said, appearing out of a hole in the stage. A deafening hawk cry accompanied crowd howls.
The artist meant this quite literally. During the early stages of the show, fans were invited to take rides on his surprisingly massive loop-de-loop roller coaster stage prop. Classic tracks like “Quintana” and “Lose” were accompanied by fireworks, haunted-house lights and, of course, flames.
The 26-year-old kept this youthfulness a quintessential part of his circus.
Song after song was met with jumping, screaming and an unleashing of vitality no artist in the game can match. Running to the main stage for “BUTTERFLY EFFECT,” Scott seemed to wish he was in the mosh pit himself.
After inviting a fan up to sing the opening of “3500,” Scott’s energy transferred to the young man. The fan sprinted off the stage headfirst, over the security pit and into the mosh pit. He crowd surfed for the entirety of the song.
This sort of energy surged through everyone in the stadium. Even on lesser-known (yet obviously just as stellar) tracks like “Drugs You Should Try It,” us kids were scorched with “live free, die young” mentality.
As the set went on, a gargantuan blowup astronaut repping the 713 rapper’s custom Jordan 4s towered. Scott took another ride on the roller coaster bobbing up and down over the GA pit — taking a fan with him once again.
Not once during the show did Travis come off as trying too hard or being above his youthful audience, making this quite possibly the best show Minneapolis has seen all year. Intimacy is near impossible in a stadium, but Scott did it with a rampage that only he could incite.
“For the youth” is the phrase that comes to mind. Goosebumps tattooed my skin after every bass drop and every screaming track.
The show ended with “SICKO MODE,” the nation’s longtime number one song. Per the song’s lyrics, it did indeed take 13 hours to calm down after the incredible spectacle of the “WISH YOU WERE HERE TOUR.”
If you weren’t there, I really do wish you were.
Grade: A+
