On November 5th, Los Angeles County heard the roars of Sofi Stadium, as Jack Cactus (Travis Scott) made Inglewood quake. But let’s bring it back, not everyone can experience a Utopia (Travis Scott’s latest album) Concert. I had gone with some friends, John and Cylas. We left the Airbnb at 6:45 PM and parked at the Target parking lot nearby so we did not have to deal with the traffic. We arrived at Sofi Stadium at 7:30 PM.
There were the usual stands at big events like this such as the hot dog stands, fake merch sellers, drug dealers, and beverage sellers. It took a while for us to find the line for us to scan the floor tickets but we eventually found it once people started running towards the new line being made. Once we got in line, it was a decently long wait; probably like 30 minutes. But people were still having fun getting drunk with 10$ tequila shots, buzz balls the size of basketballs, getting high. Some people were getting black out drunk. Like, this guy was dragging his girlfriend around because she was so out of it and then he sat her down on the floor. She was not fully functional, speaking random gibberish, and was not able to balance herself while sitting. She eventually fell back and I hear a loud thud from the concrete and now everybody is looking at her and someone tells her boyfriend that the staff will not let her through the gate if she is that drunk. Her boyfriend then exclaims that they are going no matter what because they paid $1,000 for these tickets. He carries her off and I hope she is all well, but the party never ends 😜.
Eventually, we made it to the gate, scanned our tickets and received our wristbands. Some people snuck into the venue and posed as media with their cameras. There were multiple gates where they checked out wristbands and even when we walked down 9 stories to get to the floor we had to check for wristbands. While we were waiting at the gate to enter the pit some guy shouted, “Everybody push on 3! READY? 1, 2, 3!” and I got squished up against the gate and everybody else until the gate fell down. Everybody rushed to the stage with their Jack Cactus shirts off, waving them in the air.
Tzo Touchdown opened for Travis and, overall, he was pretty mid, in my opinion. He came out hot in his football pads and with his colorful rod. He had great crowd control until he said “On the count of 3, I want everybody to say who? 1!, 2!, 3!”, the crowd yells “Who?”, he goes, “Drake”, and the crowd goes wild. He then starts playing a song from the album from “For All The Dogs” and just sings the verses. The crowd thought they were gonna get Drake but they were faked out. He then goes on to do the same thing but with Don Toliver and Tyler the Creator. Tzo’s opening lasted about 30 minutes and then we had to wait an hour and 30 minutes until Travis came out and that made a lot of people mad. In that time, people were puffing clouds, some guy shouted he had COVID to get space around him, some people threw up, some people were jumping from the seats to get to the pit, shadowboxing, Tinder matching, and throwing water everywhere. My legs and back were hurting because of all the standing. Chase B(Travis Scott’s DJ) came out on stage as a sign that the concert was about to start.
At one point while waiting I recognized my ex in the crowd but I thought I was going crazy with all the secondhand smoke in the air because the whole stadium was a big hotbox at this point. Then we made eye contact and no words were exchanged but I was sure it was her, but that didn’t matter because when 10 o’ clock struck the stadium went dark, and an AI voice started replaying, “Greeting from Utopia, before the concert starts, open that sh*t up”. Rage circles started forming in the crowd, pushing, shoving, the usual for a Travis Scott concert. Then HYAENA started playing and I heard Travis preach, “Let’s have a good one, LA.” He pops off the floor of the stage, fire flaring out of the stands, the crowd was out of control. At that point, I could care less about my ex, I was moshing, lights blaring and flickering, even when I look at the recording from my phone I still get blinded. The set list went HYAENA, THANK GOD, MODERN JAM, AYE, SDP INTERLUDE, SIRENS, PRAISE GOD, GODS COUNTRY, MY EYES, BUTTERFLY EFFECT, HIGHEST IN THE ROOM, MAMACITA, CIRCUS MAXIMUS, DELRESTO, MAFIA, I KNOW, 90210, MELTDOWN, TOPIA TWINS, NO BYSTANDERS, FE1N, SICKO MODE, GOOSEBUMPS, and after he leaves he plays TELEKINESIS. Before he started AYE, he brought up these two dudes wearing neon green ski masks on stage, then they were clipped to this stone head that would float over the stage during the duration of AYE. He did the same thing with his daughter Stormi for MAFIA. Then when FE1N came on he stopped the song and then brought out his special guests Playboi Carti and Sofi went stupid.
During the whole concert, our plan was to stick together so we didn’t get lost in the crowd. But the first thing John does when Travis comes on is jump into the mosh circles. He even said to keep his phone in my pocket since he did not have any pockets but he ended up recording the whole concert. Cy and I were trying to stay together and find him half of the concert. We eventually did after he started to calm down because he sprained his ankle. After the concert was over we were all tired, dehydrated, and reeling from the secondhand smoke.
We walked back up the nine stories and then went to go get merch. But the thing was that the line was super unorganized and people were cutting and, eventually, I didn’t want to wait and went to go get those bacon wrapped hot dogs from one of those stands that you can get at any big event and beverages for my friends waiting in line because I knew they were dehydrated. It took about an hour for them to get the merch after the management reshaped the line like three times. While we were walking down the alley to get to the target parking lot we parked at, we saw a car burglary in progress and we decided to turn right and then we walked past these guys tweaking. Then as soon as we were out they alley this guy pulls up to us and asks if we needed an Uber. We said, “we’re good” because obviously that is really suspicious especially since that is not how Uber works nowadays. We got back to the Airbnb at midnight and the guys were knocked out because they were super tired and I was still hooked on all that adrenaline, so I just sat in the hot tub until there were gunshots. It was 3 am in the lower class side of Inglewood and I did not know what I was expecting, but I guess the party never ends 😜.
