Travis Scott - Circus Maximus Tour Review

Tottenham Stadium welcomes the Circus

Alright, you youngsters, listen up! This old-school DJ is about to drop some truth bombs. Yes, you heard that right. Your friendly neighborhood purveyor of sick beats and the guy who can still spin a mean set of house music (seriously, click the link and have a listen!) just got schooled by Travis Scott.

Picture the scene, my 14 year old sends me a playlist of music and asks me if I can mix it up. Its mostly JuiceWrld and various other people missing vowels in their names and a lot of people called ‘lil’ <insert random thing here>. Even writing this I feel old. WTF! I am not an old person mentally, but listening to this vocoded, mumbly, indecipherable lyrical mess I was scratching my head a bit.

So forward wind a bit to my boy asking me to get tickets for some fella called Travis Scott. On the plus side, at least he had a name I could understand, no references to Yachts or XXX in his name, just a normal name. Had a listen to some of his stuff, it was ok, vibe was ok, the drums were pretty savage, either way I’m booking those tickets.

Finally making use of my O2 priority app I got tickets quite easily. Banging seats, my son has ADHD and struggles in big crowds (as do I sometimes) so we were up in the seated area not down in the mosh pit.

I’ll be honest, when we rolled up to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium for the Circus Maximus tour, my excitement was…well, let's just say I wasn't exactly moshing in the car. Don't get me wrong, I bleed music. From the synth-heavy pop anthems of the 80s to the heart-pumping euphoria of 90s rave, I've seen (and mixed) it all. But this new wave of vocoded rage rap? Lost on me, to be frank. Especially the lyrics – they might as well be written in hieroglyphics.

I’ve read that last paragraph back so many times and thought to myself, my god I sound soooo old, but I figured I’ll leave it in because I genuinely felt sooo old. I mean just look at these pictures below, not a single grey hair in sight! I did, rather hopefully, think that there must be more 50 somethings in the crowd with their kids, apparently not! I saw maybe 3 or 4 people roughly my age.

One thing I have to give credit to the yoot for, and I imagine this whole scene, is the fashion. Its so eclectic and refreshing. Its grungy without being grunge, goth-like, mad, colourful, casual and fresh in this age of over branding and stupid expensive trainers it was amazing to see so much unique style on display. Fashionistas pay attention!

Again, such an old thing to say, but I remember being around this age, dead into casual style - Adidas, Patrick etc that kind of thing and then latterly the rave gear, fat cords, kickers etc and thought I was the nuts. My parents never really said a word but you could tell they were mostly scratching their heads.

So for me, as a voyeur of culture, it was really inspiring to see so many different things going on and this generation were really hooked into whatever they wanted to be, whatever they wanted to wear and really didn’t seem to care at all. Which I guess is how I was back in the day but its too easy to forget that sometimes.

Anyway, we go in, grab a really expensive bottle of coke (£3.90!) from the impressively massive bar at the Tottenham Stadium - sidenote the Tottenham Stadium is absolutely incredible - and go and find our seats. We go in, sit down and wait, and wait and wait. Then all of a sudden this fella gets up on the rocky stage and starts screaming unintelligible words at the gathering masses.

At the risk of sounding old, again, I was relieved to find everyone around me looking around bemused wondering who this fella was as well. I ended up Googling who he was and it turns out he was actually not a drunk dad who’d managed to climb up on the stage but in fact Swedish rapper Yung Lean.

I’m assuming he’s a long way to go in his career and hopefully being around Travis Scott will show him that fumbling his way through each track, staggering around and laying on a rock to close his set without once really engaging with the crowd isn’t the ideal way to go.

Yung stumbled off, and still people were looking at each other wondering what just happened. Even my son didn’t know who he was and was like ‘WTF was that!’. Then the wait, the wait, the wait. Over an hour went by after Yung had left us bereft of entertainment and I was thinking to myself that this was not a good start. Granted that hour was interspersed with some funny moments, loads of chants of ‘We hate Tottenham’ from the obviously huge contingent of Arsenal fans who were down in the mosh pits.

The hilarious moment when a circle appeared and a fella in a mask (I think, unless he was really pale!) decided to jump around the circle doing Ronaldo’s goal celebration pose to the shouts of ‘SIIIUUU’ from the entire stadium and a fella who managed an impressive 12 backflips in one go.

Then Travis happened.

I will stress again, I have no idea who Travis Scott is, how massive he quite obviously is and how much of a following he has. I’ve seen quite a lot of concerts and performances and I can hand on my heart say this: Travis Scott. Is. A. Showman.

Capital letters all around. This guy owns the stage like a seasoned rockstar. His energy is electric, his charisma undeniable. The crowd, a heaving sea of humanity, pulsated in sync with every beat. They weren't just listening; they were living the music, screaming the lyrics back at him like a unified chant. It was a scene, a vibe, that transported me right back to the sweaty warehouse raves and open-air fields of my youth. Genuinely I had tingles up my spine, the same tingles you get when you hear ‘that tune’ from your youth.

Maybe it's the generational divide, maybe it's the years spent chasing that perfect breakbeat or uplifting piano banger, but I never thought I'd experience that kind of raw, collective musical energy again. I had absolutely no idea what he was singing/rapping about, everyone around me seemed to know every single syllable, but honestly I didn’t care, it swept me away, it was hypnotic, invigorating, energising and all the other words. It was immense.

And boy did he work the crowd, he absolutely nailed the performance, the lightshow was crazy, as were the indoor fireworks (though the rockets on strings were quite amusing as they shot towards us and I literally thought we were going to go out in a ball of flame until they stopped short and you realised they were on wires!). All the ‘in-the-know’ references to the crowd. That crowd, to a person they were all sucked into this charismatic ball of energy screaming, shouting, vocoding his way around the strange rocky path stage thing.

There were some surprise appearances, I mean no surprise to me as I had no idea who they were but Ice Spice - a 19 something year old rapper who could have done with maybe a jumper but decided to rock up in some underwear and bend over a lot to the delight of the crowd, man and woman alike. Fully aware I sound very old there!

Couldn’t really hear her, and the video doesn’t do it justice but it was an exclusive track from her new album apparently, the crowd lapped it up. Then another fella called Central C who I think is English and some other guy who I didn’t know at all which was also a bit of a tune.

There was this one track, which lasted about 60 seconds but to cover that Travis decided to sing it about 8 times. I say sing, it was more a call to arms as the chorus rang out and the crowd in unison - even me - cried ‘FEIN FEIN FEIN FEIN-FEIN FEIN FEIN FEIN’. As I say he did that one about 8 times, each time more raucous and the crowd loved it, I loved it, by that point I was a paid up fan, still no clue what he was rapping about but I was utterly buzzing!

Listen, I still can't tell you what most of Travis Scott's lyrics are about. But the pure emotion, the sheer power of the performance? That transcends language barriers. This, my friends, is this generation's version of a full-on musical movement. It's loud, it's brash, it's undeniably electric, and it's got this old school DJ re-evaluating his musical prejudices. Maybe Travis Scott isn't so bad after all. No, Travis Scott is absolutely immense, if you can see him live go, I implore you it was an absolutely incredible experience.

Maybe all I needed was a night at the Circus Maximus to get my groove back.

FEIN FEIN FEIN.