Travis Scott went from sleeping on couches to running his own label
After dropping out of university to chase music, Jacques Webster slept on a friend's floor in New York, was stranded in Los Angeles, and was cut off by his parents. Then the rapper T.I. heard one of his beats. Within a few years, as Travis Scott, he was topping charts and building a brand.
Webster was born in Houston in 1991 and spent his early childhood with his grandmother in South Park, a rough neighbourhood he later said gave him his edge. His father was a soul musician and his grandfather a jazz composer. He took his stage name from a favourite uncle, Travis, and from the real first name of Kid Cudi, one of his heroes. He left the University of Texas at San Antonio in his second year to commit to music full time.
The early years were hard. After four frustrating months in New York he moved west, only for a friend's offer of housing to fall through; back in Houston, his parents threw him out. He returned to Los Angeles and slept on a student's couch until T.I.'s people called him in, and T.I. freestyled over one of his productions. By 2012 Scott had a major-label contract with Epic and a producer's publishing deal with Kanye West's GOOD Music.
Success came in a rush. His second album became his first to top the Billboard 200 in 2016, and Astroworld, released in 2018, gave him his first chart-topping single, Sicko Mode, with Drake. He later became the first artist to have three songs debut at the top of the Hot 100 within a year.
The business grew alongside the music. His Cactus Jack label, founded in 2017, signs other artists and runs a festival mixing music, fashion and art, and he has partnered with Nike, Dior and McDonald's. His career was also shadowed by tragedy when a crowd crush at his Astroworld Festival in November 2021 killed ten people.
Source: Travis Scott
