The song was first used in Scott's girlfriend Kylie Jenner's "Kybrows" commercial on April 29, 2019, before Scott debuted the song during his set at the Rolling Loud festival in Miami on May 10–12, 2019. On August 31, 2019, Scott played a portion of the song at a concert that included a verse from Lil Baby,[6] but was ultimately cut in the final version because Scott wanted to express the breakup with himself and Jenner on his own. The demo version featuring Baby leaked on December 24, 2019. Baby's verse was on the remix of the song, which is on the compilation albumJackBoys. However, the original version of "Highest in the Room" did not make it onto the album.
Promotion
Scott officially announced the track's release through social media on September 30, posting three covers for the song as well as a pre-order link and captioning the post "See u on the 4th".[7]
A music video was released on October 3, 2019, on YouTube, directed by Dave Meyers and Travis Scott himself, while it was produced by Nathan Scherrer, Randy Donaldson, and Sam Lecca.[8]
Commercial performance
"Highest in the Room" debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on the issue dated October 19, 2019, becoming Scott's second number-one single on the chart (after 2018's "Sicko Mode"), his first number-one single on its first week on the chart, and 35th single to debut at the number one position in the chart's history. "Highest in the Room" debuted atop the Streaming Songs chart with 59 million streams and debuted at number two on the Digital Songs chart with 51,000 downloads.[9] The song fell to number six the following week on October 26, 2019. It later returned to the top 10 on the issue dated January 11, 2020 at number eight, partly charged by sales from the remix featuring Rosalia and Lil Baby.[10][11] Elsewhere, in Greece the song charted at number one. The UK Singles Chart number two on 17 October.
A remix featuring Spanish singer Rosalía and American rapper Lil Baby was released on December 27, 2019. It was the first track on Scott and other Cactus Jack members' album, JackBoys, which was released on the same day.[4] Originally, Lil Baby was supposed to be on the original song, but his verse was cut for unknown reasons. The remix version received a radio release on January 7, 2020.[5]
