Travis Scott’s ‘Utopia’ debuts with second biggest streaming numbers of 2023
Travis Scott‘s new album ‘Utopia’ has become the second-most streamed album of 2023, less than two weeks after it was released.
The rapper’s first album since 2018 has been streamed globally over 650million times, while Apple Music confirmed it had the biggest first day streams of an album in 2023, and Spotify named it the most streamed record in 2023 on its first day with 128 million streams.
In terms of both sales and streams, ‘Utopia’ has had 2023’s third-biggest first week numbers, just behind behind Morgan Wallen and Taylor Swift.
The album features an illustrious list of credited artists including Beyoncé, SZA, Kanye West and Daft Punk‘s Guy-Manuel. Bon Iver, The Weeknd, Sampha, Drake, James Blake, Young Thug also make appearances.
To celebrate the album’s release, Scott played a special show and livestream at Italy’s Circus Maximus, an entertainment stadium and public park in Rome that used to host chariot races.
He brought out Kanye West to perform ‘Praise God’ and ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’. As Pitchfork report, Scott told the crowd: “There is no Utopia without Kanye West. There is no Travis Scott without Kanye West. There is no Rome without Kanye West. Make some noise for Ye.” It marked West’s first live performance in 18 months.
Scott’s original ‘Utopia’ launch show at the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt fell apart due to “production issues”. The show was meant to take place on July 28, but was cancelled by Live Nation Middle East a day before.
The album has, however, courted controversy for not crediting KayCyy for his feature on its second track, ‘Thank God’, despite performing the song’s chorus, while it has also been reported that he wrote a sizeable amount of it.
When a fan tweeted “Why tf is KayCyy’s feature still hidden? He literally wrote a large part of it and sings the entire chorus [crying emoji],” the artist responded by saying: “Y’all keep sending me these messages… Y’all know what I do..! I’m not no background singer… fuck Trav!!!”
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Emma Wilkes
NME
