‘Maria I’m Drunk’: the song Travis Scott called “so pure”
The rapper lifestyle is often defined by its highest highs: crazy nightlife, excessive drinking, and designer drugs. Fans of the rapper Travis Scott were shocked at the release of the tracklist of his 2015 album Rodeo. The biggest surprise came in the form of finding a collaboration with an innocent Canadian pop star who had only just turned 21 at the time: Justin Bieber.
Multiple Travis Scott tracks have been leaked and circulated around corners of the internet since his earliest days as a SoundCloud rapper. He rose to fame after his debut full-length project, Owl Pharaoh, was released in 2012. The Houston rapper was critiqued for his lack of lyrical prowess as a result of this mixtape. He would then go on to collaborate with other rappers and producers, building up a successful music career for himself.
Leading up to the release of his debut album Rodeo, Scott teased his song ‘Maria I’m Drunk’ onstage and through leaked Soundcloud demos. At first, featuring only himself and Young Thug, the song followed the rappers boasting about their crazy lifestyles, winning and dining with girls and being drunk in the studio, wearing expensive designer watches.
However, fans were shocked when Justin Bieber’s name was found on the final tracklist, not placing the ‘Baby’ singer in the same world as the hardcore rappers. Ultimately, the surprise feature on the track wasn’t as smooth as Bieber’s falsetto. At the time of its release, fans could only listen to the track if they paid for Rodeo. It wasn’t until three years later, in 2018, when Travis Scott took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to announce the song would appear on streaming services
In an interview with Billboard, Scott recalled the moment he first sent Justin Bieber the practically finished track before “he [Bieber] called me the next day like ‘Yo, come up to the studio’.”
“As soon as I got to the studio, he played it for me.” The SICKO MODE rapper added. “He already had his verse done. That shit was fucking crazy. That shit’s so pure!”
Scott was shocked that one of the biggest pop stars at the time was so invested and prepared to feature on an unsavoury track about things that the public would never relate to Justin Bieber’s innocent-kid celebrity persona.
The Canadian singer’s performance on the track was met with rave reviews, with listeners debating whose verse is the better and Pitchfork lauding the song as the album’s best. Bieber’s career was experiencing a mood shift at the time. Attempting to ditch the child-star constraints of being labelled ‘cute’ and ‘pure’, he would go on to release ‘What Do You Mean?’ and ‘Love Yourself’ – proving himself to be a serious artist who could climb the charts.
From Travis Scott’s tumultuous relationship with Kylie Jenner, followed by his other controversies from over the years, it was a surprise to see the naive Justin Bieber want to collaborate with a rapper of that renown so badly in 2015.
Scott’s catastrophic Astroworld Festival in 2021 led to the deaths of ten audience members and hundreds more being left injured due to mass crowd surging of up to 50,000 attendants. Along with his other controversies, it’s no shock that his fans were startled to eventually see Bieber’s name on the tracklist.