
One song on ? is called “Hope,” and it’s dedicated to the victims of the Parkland school shooting.
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An interview with XXL last year had him talking about reading the Twilight series from jail-a weirdly apt image. He’s issued a general statement of regret about disrespecting women, promised to donate money to anti-abuse charities, and undertaken a campaign encouraging fans to do good deeds.Īrtistically, he uses contradiction to sell a feeling of relatable, messy humanity: sensitive yet hardened, immature yet jaded, propriety-upending but also self-conscious. An image-rehab attempt appears to be underway, too. XXXTentacion built his fanbase via SoundCloud uploads over the past few years, with signal boosts from new tastemakers like Grandmaison, as well as musicians like Kendrick Lamar and The Weeknd, who have signaled their appreciation for his work. 1 album in the country, posting more formidable one-week streaming numbers than almost any other album this year. ? didn’t garner reviews in many major outlets upon its release in mid-March, and it’s still the No. XXXTentacion should not be on this cover.”īut he’s getting famous still. When XXL included XXXTentacion in their influential annual “Freshman Class” feature-because fans voted him into the one slot that the editors don’t decide on their own- Highsnobiety’s Stephanie Smith-Strickland wrote that the magazine was playing a “dangerous ethical game.” Stereogum’s Tom Breihan was more blunt: “We should not continue to make him famous. “Stop giving your money to rappers openly who beat, rape, manipulate, and abuse women,” wrote Uproxx’s Aaron Williams last year in a wide-ranging piece. It’s not like the media’s been uncritical. XXXTentacion’s story might be, in part, the same story about the weakening of old gatekeepers that the public sees playing out in politics. Just this past weekend, rape accusations surfaced against XXXTentacion’s former manager Adam Grandmaison, host of the scene-defining podcast No Jumper. 1 album and a top-20 single, propelled by what appears to be a very young listenership that has also championed new rappers like Kodak Black, accused of sexual assault, and 6ix9ine, convicted of sexual misconduct with a child. Yet here is an alleged assaulter of a pregnant woman with a No. The #MeToo movement often gets discussed in generational terms, and progressives often claim that young people will eventually usher in a kinder, gentler society. What’s new is that we’re supposedly in a moment of greater scrutiny toward male misbehavior, when celebrity careers are being ended on what seems like a weekly basis for alleged offenses ranging from lewd comments to rape. In pop history, of course, the list of successful musicians given to brutality off stage is long: John Lennon, James Brown, Sid Vicious, Dr. Watching Saturday Night Live Is Like Doomscrolling David Sims He’s gotten in fights with fans, and encouraged fans to fight other people.

There are other stories too, like the one he told on a podcast about choking and bloodying an inmate he believed was gay, for looking at him wrong.
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Most famously, he’s awaiting trial for charges related to an alleged 2016 assault on his then-girlfriend while she was pregnant, which he denies doing. Onfroy has a history of violence, memorialized both in court records and his own brags.

Read up on XXXTentacion’s backstory and you might be reminded of a diverse range of icons for more disturbing reasons. “The only person who inspires me is Kurt Cobain,” he’s said.

When he screams, you might think of Minor Threat, or of Minor Threat’s many descendants. He does rock, too, emoting over simple and cinematic guitar or piano, as if in a Dashboard Confessional demo. When the 20-year-old Jahseh Dwayne Onfroy raps, he can seem like another of the playful mumblers that his generation is associated with, or like a conscientious underground rapper from the ’90s, sweating each syllable over tense snares. But the funny thing is that if you listen to his album, ?, you’ll hear a young man trying to sound like a lot of different people who’ve come before him.

1 album in the country, is exactly the kind of artist who seems designed to make adults feel out of touch. XXXTentacion, creator of what’s now the No.
