A new report from the Houston Police Department, surrounding the deadly crowd surge at Travis Scott's Astroworld Festival in 2021, has revealed that Scott had a contract in place with Apple that required him to finish his set in order to receive payment.

The agreement: Apple was brought on at the "last minute" due to rising costs and reportedly gave Scott five stipulations to fulfill in order to receive a $4.5 million payment, per the contract. One of those stipulations was to complete his show, investigators wrote. The report does not include a copy of the contract.

What happened? The majority of the criticism directed at Scott at the time of the tragedy was over the fact that he continued to perform while the situation was becoming increasingly unsafe, staying on stage for 37 minutes after the festival had been declared a mass casualty event. 

Scott told police he did not learn of the deaths until hours after the show. However, his statements were disputed in the police report by two audio engineers who said they heard an associate backstage telling Scott via microphone that concertgoers were dying. Investigators could not understand a recording of the messages relayed to Scott because of poor audio quality.

What else? Earlier this summer, a Texas grand jury declined to criminally indict Scott and five others over the tragedy. It has not confirmed whether they knew about the contract. Several lawsuits are still ongoing, though three suits filed on behalf of three victims have been settled out of court.

Steve Herman, a plaintiff’s attorney who is not involved in the case, told Houston Landing that the reveal of Scott and Apple's agreement could be a "very important" factor in litigation.

"He’s never going to admit that that was his motivation, but if there’s other circumstantial evidence from which ultimately a jury can infer that that was a motivation in not stopping the concert, even though he knew people were getting crushed, that’s pretty powerful stuff," he said, noting that lawyers will likely try to determine what language was in the contract and whether Scott knew about it.

"There’s a good chance he didn’t even read the contract," Herman said. "It could be important evidence, but it could also be completely irrelevant. You would have to know a lot more about why that provision was in there."