Travis Scott can’t pick up the phone, baby — it’s at the bottom of the ocean. An attorney for Scott mentioned it in the ongoing civil litigation against the rapper over his 2021 Astroworld Festival, where ten people were killed and thousands more injured. Rolling Stone reports that attorneys for the plaintiffs had filed an “emergency motion to compel production†of Scott’s phone and other devices. In a September 15 hearing, Scott’s attorney, Steve Brody, reportedly said that records from Scott’s manager, David Stromberg, who had “never turned his phone over†for imaging, could be provided by September 27, but acquiring Scott’s phone wouldn’t be so easy. That’s because it “fell off a boat in January of 2022 and landed somewhere at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico and is not able to be retrieved,†Brody told a judge. He went on to explain that they could not get the messages from Apple or Scott’s phone carrier, either, and Scott had not backed up his phone to iCloud.
“Now, looking back, yeah, in an ideal world, his phone would have been imaged on November 6 or November 7 or November 8,†Brody admitted. “Or the 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, any time until it fell into the ocean in January of 2022,†added the shocked judge, Kristen Hawkins. Brody went on to acknowledge that “in an ideal situation, that would have happened. It did not.â€
As to how Scott’s phone ended up in the bottom of the ocean? The rapper was indeed in Mexico in January 2022, two months after the festival. Scott was spotted leaving Cabo San Lucas on January 14, and in an interview around the time, his producer, Wheezy, said Scott had been working on his album Utopia there. Scott’s team had contested previous attempts to acquire his phone, saying it had confidential information and that the request was unreasonable. Scott and others involved with the festival are facing a massive, multi-district litigation combining hundreds of individual suits. He was previously not charged by police over the deaths and injuries.
The phone revelation came before Scott was questioned for eight hours in a deposition on September 18. Now, plaintiffs’ attorneys are counting on Stromberg’s phone and messages, which Brody claimed would “show the vast majority, if not all, relevant texts with Mr. Scott related to this event.†Scott will be questioned again in October after those messages are reviewed.