Travis Scott has stopped answering the first interview question to sign a shoe that has been thrown from the rear passenger window of his Range Rover. Dozens of USC students piled around the car, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the biggest stars their generation has ever seen. The lucky ones get close enough to push a phone, shoe or hand through a cracked window, angling for a photo, autograph or quick fist bump. Scott obliges as best he can, and the driver of the car moves the car as best he can. “What’s up, kid? What’s up,” he says, leaning out the window, nodding to his driver before insisting, “Slow down, slow down.”
Excitement builds as more kids join the crowd, but Scott keeps his cool. It makes one of us – the tension in the car is palpable. There is a moment where there is a clear shift in the energy of the rush, which means that it is starting to move from “crowd” to “crowd”. As it arrives, Scott rolls up his window, is careful to make sure it’s clear of hands, fingers, or other appendages, and begins calmly instructing the driver that Sue Plus now. How to navigate a difficult right hand bend due to fan. He finds an opening—a gap in the crowd through which a vehicle can escape unscathed—and tells the driver to move. The Range Rover moves forward, a few stray students speeding up behind it, waving and snapping pictures from the sidewalk. After two hundred feet they are left behind. The other three passengers in the car exhale, and Scott grabs a rolling tray.
“Okay – what was the question?”
Scott’s visit to USC is the final stop on a whirlwind tour—a 36-hour sprint celebrating a collaboration between the rapper’s Cactus Jack clothing line and Mitchell & Ness (by way of Maniac). As exclusive merchandise designed by Scott is being sold on more than a dozen college campuses across the country, Scott and Fanatic founder Michael Rubin have shown at three participating schools—Louisiana State University, the University of Texas , and the University of Southern California. .
Their timing turned out to be better than anyone expected. Just one day before the tour began, the NCAA Women’s March Madness Tournament offered a banner night for the sport. “Today may be one of the worst days in women’s sports history” Scott tweeted. That morning, and the man called it right. A matchup between the University of Connecticut and USC and a rematch of last year’s final between LSU and Iowa drew record-breaking audiences, surpassing nearly every conceivable major league in American sports over the past year. . The games themselves also lived up to the hype, delivering an all-time great night of sports (“Start interviewing for Iowa-LSU-USC-UConn 30 for 30 This evening,” suggested one Twitter user..) Seemingly overnight, college players like Paige Bueckers, JuJu Watkins, Angel Reese, and Caitlin Clark became household names.
Watkins and Reese’s USC and LSU teams ended up on the losing end of their matchups, but their stars shone brighter than ever afterward. Reese declared for that year’s WNBA draft the day the tour began and attended LSU with Scott, while Watkins (one of the game’s best players as just a freshman) himself. Called the future of college basketball. “Obviously we’d love for them to still compete for the title,” explains Ruben. GQ“But the timing worked well for us.”
Credit : www.gq.com