Like the Germs, XXX’s bloody, exposed music is already highly influential. aw thoughts,” like Kendrick Lamar did of XXX last year. Now imagine the tiny indie Slash Records somehow got “Lexicon Devil” to the Top 40 and Andy Gibb was saying things like “isten to this album if you feel anything. Crash drained his battered brain for his art, splayed his emotions, squalled noisily in a way that made even the underground feel overproduced, and was dead at 22 in 1980. The closest analogue for XXX’s short career – in terms of trajectory, not offstage conduct – may be Darby Crash, singer for punk pioneers the Germs. On the Charts: XXXTentacion Nabs First Number One, Metallica Finish Second The Billboard charts recently changed their algorithms in a way that – by accident or design – will likely prevent artists like him from succeeding again. He was managed by a YouTube star with face tattoos. Streaming giant Spotify eventually formed and subsequently redacted a policy for him. Until the Caroline deal, XXX’s success seemed completely outside of the machinations of the music industry entirely – no label, no press, no radio, no late night TV spots. Should He Be?” But the rarely spoken truth was that XXX didn’t need traditional media interviews, reviews and features to blow up – and those institutions ultimately didn’t succeed in tearing him down. Seven of its 11 songs charted on the Billboard Hot 100.Īt points before and after signing a $6 million deal with Caroline in late 2017, publications like Pitchfork, Noisey and Uproxx ran articles with headlines like “ You Don’t Have to Listen to Abusive Rappers“ “ No Matter How Good The Rapper Is, Talent Shouldn’t Trump Human Decency“ and “ XXXTentacion Is Blowing Up Behind Bars. With no real label beyond a distribution deal with Empire, and no physical version to speak of, it reached Number Two on the charts. They still felt like first drafts, but these were tunes that sounded more like My Chemical Romance unplugged over a trap beat. Shortly after the success of “Look at Me!,” XXX would release his debut LP, 2017’s 17, a pivot to narcoleptic songs that dealt openly with depression, heartbreak and suicidal thoughts on an album that was less than 22 minutes long. “The raw energy of that – the distortion – is our specialty and we used that to our advantage.” “It was like the worst recording set up, you could set it up anywhere and that was the wave we were on,” cohort Ski Mask the Slump God told Rolling Stone about the gear they used at the time. News media and social media made attempts to silence, de-platform and otherwise cancel him, but his impact on music will be felt for years to come nonetheless. During his life, XXX was callous about the accusations, even mocking. A deposition excerpted by Pitchfork and reporting from the Miami New Times pointed to a history of physical and mental violence that’s monstrous by any standard – most notably the allegations of beating her so severely that he damaged her optic nerve. XXXTentacion’s achievements as a zeitgeist-grabbing, industry-defying, boundary-destroying phenomenon are overshadowed by reports of the abuse he inflicted on his pregnant ex-girlfriend. Not since Ritchie Valens in 1959 has a musician carved such a huge cultural path, only to be cut down before they reach 21. Within two, he would have a Number One album that sounded like nothing else on the charts, save for imitators in his wake. Within a year, he would amass a legion of fans and become the face of a burgeoning subgenre – despite the fact that it seemed like the only photo of him was his 2016 mugshot. Soon, it felt like the world’s most culture-shifting rap superstars were taking notes from him. He hit the charts with no record label besides his own imprint, no radio play and a near-total press blackout. In his final month as a 17-year-old high school dropout, he uploaded a song to SoundCloud that – almost single-handedly – changed the way hip-hop looks and sounds. Popular music has never known a story like that of South Florida rapper Jahseh “ XXXTentacion” Onfroy.
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