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Travis Scott · S2 E1
New York, New York
Washington Heights, sleeping on couches, making beats in tiny apartments, and a music blog called Illroots
Washington Heights, New York City, 2012. A twenty-year-old from Missouri City with no record deal, no apartment, and no Plan B stands on a sidewalk holding a duffel bag full of hard drives and borrowed clothes.
Travis Scott, THANK GOD (2023). Filmed at the ancient Amphitheatre of Pompeii, Italy. Travis performs to thousands in a Roman ruin, a long way from a borrowed couch in Washington Heights. Every empire starts with someone too stubborn to go home.
Uptown, No Money
Travis lands in Washington Heights, the Dominican neighborhood on the northern tip of Manhattan. He connects with Mike Waxx, who runs the influential music blog Illroots. Waxx gives him a couch to sleep on and a platform to upload his earliest solo tracks. It's not a record deal. It's better: it's a direct line to the internet.
Sources
Travis Scott, Wikipedia
The Famous People, Travis Scott biography
Washington Heights, Manhattan
The uptown Manhattan neighborhood where Travis crashed on couches and uploaded beats to the internet. Miles from any recording studio, but close enough to the music industry's front door to keep knocking.
“I was sleeping on couches, eating whatever. I didn't have nothing. But I was in New York, and that was enough. Everything was happening there.”
— Travis Scott, interview with Charlamagne Tha God, The Breakfast Club, 2016
THANK GOD, Travis Scott (2023)
Produced by Travis alongside Kanye West, WondaGurl, and Allen Ritter, this track opens with what sounds like a choir filtered through a broken speaker. The production is massive but restrained, letting the beat breathe where most producers would stack. Listen for Travis's daughter Stormi in the background vocals, a family detail buried in layers of reverb. The gratitude in the title is specific: this is someone who remembers exactly what nothing felt like.
Sources
UTOPIA liner notes, Cactus Jack / Epic Records, 2023
Songfacts, "Thank God by Travis Scott"
TAP TO REVEAL: What was the website that gave Travis his first real audience?
What New York City neighborhood did Travis Scott move to when he first arrived in the city?
wonderful, Travis Scott ft. The Weeknd
From Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight (2016). The Weeknd's chorus floats over a dreamy, euphoric beat that sounds like the city at night through a taxi window. There's an ache underneath the celebration, the feeling of being surrounded by everything you wanted and still not sure you belong. For a kid who just arrived in New York with nothing, that tension between wonder and loneliness is the entire experience.
wonderful, Travis Scott ft. The Weeknd (2016)
Read the lyrics while you listen. The hook says it all: everything is wonderful, but the verses keep circling back to what it cost to get here. Abel and Travis trade the same feeling from opposite angles.
New York gives Travis a couch and a blog. But a track called "Lights (Love Sick)" is about to land on the desk of a rapper from Atlanta who runs his own label. Next: T.I. hears something he likes, and Grand Hustle comes calling.
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