Travis Scott has opened up about the creative process behind his UTOPIA album and revealed that his original intent for it was supposed to be very different than what it turned out to be.
In a new interview with GQ, Scott discussed how he’d like to eventually write a musical, and thought that UTOPIA would be the pathway to that desire.
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“I wanted the album to be a play,” he said. “I was trying to take Broadway — because the thing about Broadway theaters, they’re kind of small — I was trying to bring the idea of Broadway to bigger venues. Like, either, like, plays in stadiums or plays in arenas, but still make it feel like a Broadway bill.”
He went on to say that he even went so far as to meet with the playwright Jeremy O. Harris to try to make it happen. “I love Jeremy O. Harris. He’s amazing. We were exploring all these different ideas. I met with him. I met with a couple of different people. We just talked about the idea of it happening. I was still trying to figure it out,” he said.
Elsewhere during the interview, Scott revealed that while he was growing up, he had a longstanding desire to become a nephrologist — a kidney doctor.
Scott said that the desire was born when he went to a sleepover at a friend’s house when he was in grammar school.
“We went to his crib,” he said. “His crib was crazy. I’ve never seen a crib like this. It was OD. His dad was an ob-gyn. And I remember his uncle was at the house, and I asked his uncle, I was like, ‘What do you do?’ And he’s like, ‘I’m a nephrologist.’ He told me what it was, and I was like, ‘Yo, it’s crazy.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I want to be that.’”
“I don’t know why being a kidney doctor was just such… I think it was his swag,” he continued. “Like, his whole swag was just, like, he was fresh. I don’t know. It was the idea of just, like, saving people at the time was dope.”
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The rapper said that he remained interested in that career path through middle school and high school, and even up until he entered college at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
“I used to go and shadow at the hospitals. So I fell in love with it more there, just the whole process of it all,” he explained. “I wanted to own my own practice, know the business side of it, do the medicine side of it.”
