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Travis Scott · S1 E5
Elkins High School
Drumline, theater kid energy, and a growing reputation as the guy who could make beats
Elkins High School, Missouri City, 2008. The drumline warms up on the practice field, and one kid in the back keeps adding fills nobody asked for, turning a standard marching cadence into something that sounds like a Timbaland production.
Trippie Redd ft. Travis Scott, Dark Knight Dummo (2017). The raw, unhinged energy in this video is the closest thing on camera to what Travis brought to a high school hallway. Before the stage dives and festival headlining, there was a kid at Elkins who simply could not sit still.
Fort Bend's Loudest Student
Elkins High School sits in the Fort Bend Independent School District, serving the quiet suburbs of Missouri City and Sugar Land. Good school, good test scores, zero music industry connections. His father taught him drums at age three, and Travis brings that same restless percussive energy to everything at Elkins: the hallways, the cafeteria, the parking lot after the bell.
Sources
News Britania, "Who Is Jacques Webster? The Full Story of Travis Scott's Father"
Elkins High School, Missouri City
The Fort Bend ISD school where Travis spent four years building beats between classes and telling anyone who'd listen that he was going to be famous. In 2024, he returned to gift the graduating class 600 pairs of Air Jordans in school colors.
“My whole music theory comes from my pops and my grandfather. My dad taught me drums when I was three. I was always on some music, always.”
— Travis Scott, interview with Nardwuar, 2015
Dark Knight Dummo, Trippie Redd ft. Travis Scott (2017)
Travis's verse is pure chaos energy: distorted vocals, unpredictable flow switches, ad-libs that hit like a mosh pit in a phone booth. The beat by Honorable C.N.O.T.E. lurches forward like it might fall over at any moment. Listen for how Travis turns his voice into a percussion instrument, bending and layering it until it merges with the production. This is what that hyperactive drumline kid grew into.
Sources
A Love Letter to You 2 credits, 10K Projects, 2017
TAP TO REVEAL: Who was the high school friend that changed Travis's life?
What instrument did Travis Scott's father teach him at age three?
ASTROTHUNDER, Travis Scott
From ASTROWORLD (2018). A spacey, floating track that sounds like staring at the sky from a high school football field after everyone else has gone home. The bass drifts underneath while Travis sings about being somewhere else entirely. It's the sonic version of a kid whose body is in a classroom but whose mind is already on a stage somewhere far away.
ASTROTHUNDER, Travis Scott (2018)
Read the lyrics while you listen. "I just keep on going to the moon" isn't a metaphor for fame. It's the exact feeling of sitting in a classroom with a notebook full of beat patterns, knowing you belong somewhere bigger.
High school is done. College is next, technically. But the University of Texas at San Antonio is about to lose its newest student before the first semester ends. Next: the phone call home that changed everything.
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