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Travis Scott · S1 E1
April 30, 1992
Born Jacques Berman Webster II in Houston, Texas, to a family steeped in music
Houston, Texas, April 30, 1992. A soul musician holds his newborn son, Jacques Berman Webster II, and doesn't yet know he's looking at the third generation of Webster men who will choose music over everything.
Travis Scott, BUTTERFLY EFFECT (2017). The title says it all: one small event, one birth in a Houston hospital, and the entire trajectory of modern rap shifts. The murky, bass-heavy production is pure Houston DNA, slowed down and dripping with the city's chopped-and-screwed lineage.
The Webster Musical Dynasty
Jacques Webster Sr. is a soul musician. His father before him, Travis's grandfather, composed jazz. Music isn't a hobby in this family. It's an inheritance, passed down like a last name.
“My dad was really into soul music. And my grandfather was into jazz. It was always just around. I didn't have to go find music, it literally just found me.”
— Travis Scott, interview with Pharrell Williams, OTHERtone on Beats 1, 2020
BUTTERFLY EFFECT, Travis Scott (2017)
A murky, hypnotic loop from Murda Beatz with co-production from Travis himself. The synths hover like Houston humidity while the 808s hit low enough to rattle a trunk. Listen for the way Travis layers his own ad-libs underneath the verses, creating a call-and-response with himself. The song spent 27 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, but its real DNA traces back to Houston's chopped-and-screwed tradition: slow it down, let the bass breathe, make everything feel like it's floating.
Sources
Billboard Hot 100 chart history, Travis Scott, billboard.com
TAP TO REVEAL: What was happening in Houston rap the week Travis was born?
Houston, 1992
This is not a city that needs another rapper. Houston already has Rap-A-Lot Records, UGK recording in Port Arthur, and a Third Ward scene that runs on trunk-rattling bass. But nobody in that hospital room is thinking about rap yet. The Websters are a jazz and soul family, and that distinction matters.
Travis Scott's grandfather and father were musicians in which two genres?
HOUSTONFORNICATION, Travis Scott
From ASTROWORLD (2018). Travis's love letter to the city that built him. Over a swirling, futuristic beat, he raps about Houston's influence on everything he became. The title fuses his hometown with his ambition. If you want to understand what Houston sounds like through Travis Scott's ears, start here.
HOUSTONFORNICATION, Travis Scott (2018)
Read the lyrics while you listen. Travis weaves Houston street culture, success, and homesickness into verses that hit different when you know he wrote them about the city where he was born.
Jacques has the bloodline and the city. But before Missouri City's quiet streets, there was South Park, one of Houston's roughest neighborhoods, and a grandmother's house where a toddler first heard the world outside. Next: the six years that taught him what Houston really sounds like.
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