Nine musicians post new GTA 6 artwork and tease the soundtrack

A row of musicians published previously unseen Grand Theft Auto VI artwork on 15 September, all within the same few hours and all on their own accounts. Kotaku counted nine: Travis Scott, Future, Metro Boomin, Morgan Wallen, Yung Lean, Rauw Alejandro, the duo CA7RIEL and Paco Amoroso, PinkPantheress and Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. ComicBook's roundup adds Fred Again to that list. The pictures are new, drawn in the style Rockstar uses for its own key art, and none of them had been seen anywhere before that morning.

Only one of the posts says anything out loud. Travis Scott put up an image of a woman's feet in purple heels next to a pole and wrote "Phase 1", then "NOW ITS TIME. MY RETURN TO GAME. GOTTA COME WITH RAGE AND A LOT OF DANCING", then "J... O. H...", "to be continued" and "See yall soon", tagging Rockstar Games. Read those three letters as Jack of Hearts and they point at the adult club whose neon sign burns behind Boobie Ike in Rockstar's own character art.

Everyone else posted a picture and nothing else. Keith Richards an iguana, Morgan Wallen a row of sun loungers by a pool, Future a sports car with a Leonida plate, Rauw Alejandro an inflatable flamingo, PinkPantheress and CA7RIEL and Paco Amoroso a boat. Hip hop, country, Latin pop and a Rolling Stone in a single morning.

Rockstar itself has said nothing. There is no Newswire post, no soundtrack album, no list of radio stations, no track titles, and not one of the artists explained what they actually did for the game. Push Square wrote it plainly: a teaser is not a confirmed spot on the in-game soundtrack. Dork pointed at the same gap. Everything the game has officially given us on music so far is the Extended Look, where fourteen licensed songs play through scenes and car radios.

What changed is who moves first. Two months before 19 November the opening music beat came from the artists rather than from the studio, and it arrived without a trailer attached. "Phase 1" promises a phase two, but it is Travis Scott promising it, not Rockstar.