The death of XXXTentacion is a tragedy
Not because he was a saint — but because the death of any young person for no reason is an apocalypse.
Jahseh Onfroy, the artist known as XXXTentacion, was murdered in broad daylight in Deerfield Beach, FL, in what is initially suspected to be a robbery. As he sat slumped in his sports car on a hot summer day in Florida, onlookers filmed what was probably his last moments on Earth as someone checked him for a pulse.
XXXTentacion, 20-year-old controversial rapper and troubled youth is gunned down in broad daylight, and his dying breaths captured and shared as a viral video. Before his body has even arrived at the coroner the internet has begun to bash him.
This, is a tragedy.
Regardless of how you felt about his music, or about his well-documented and often-cited list of horrific transgressions, it is undeniably sad that this young person’s life was taken. That should be the end of this article. Unfortunately it’s not.
I feel obligated to say something about this vitriol being spouted about the deceased because it’s impossible for me to understand how anyone could feel anything but sadness about this man’s story. I’ve only read about it for an afternoon. But even before reading through the one (really, really good) article in the Miami New Times about him, I could see through the re-regurgitated and misquoted quotes, and his life is so clearly a tragedy.
That it’s such a familiar-sounding tragedy is what makes all the more heartbreaking.
XXXTentacion’s existence seemed a tortured one, beginning in childhood. Lots of people have had troubled childhoods and grew up to not become monsters. It’s just that most people that do monstrous things tend to have a source of inspiration for that kind of behavior, and it tends to be their own torturers.
No matter. 20-something-year-olds being robbed and murdered is still grotesque and uniquely cruel. Young people screw up in some really spectacular ways. I can attest to this with confidence having been a young person and having screwed up quite a few times in my day. Many of us can say the same. The beauty of being young and dumb is that both of those things can’t last forever! If the latter ever disappears it’s almost always because the former did too.
That young man was in desperate need of a lot of things, starting with (but not limited to):
- A trip to jail for his crimes
- A positive mentor or parental figure
- Counseling
- Forgiveness
- A second chance
But he gets none of them now that he’s dead.
Doesn’t matter why he was killed. Doesn’t matter what he did or whether or not he paid for his crimes or if he was a genius or if he was a fad or a one-hit-wonder or anything else.
Because he’s dead. That sucks. It sucks he got murdered. End of discussion.
The discussion about ethical entertainment consumption will go on from here — should we consume media made by people that do terrible things? — and XXXTacion’s story will forever be filed under a subheading that reads “Artists that became famous because of their crimes.” Rightfully or wrongly, that’s where it will be.
Regardless of what you’ve done, no one deserves to be murdered or mocked in death. And regardless of what you’ve done everyone should be given a chance to obtain forgiveness through admittance, reconciliation, compensation, or self-improvement. Forgiveness comes in many forms, and not all crimes are created equal. But I believe very few of us are completely beyond redemption.
I don’t condone the behavior that he’s accused of. It’s obviously absolutely abhorrent. So was Dr. Dre’s, Eminem’s, Frank Sinatra’s, and a whole list of people who think of as having either lived long enough to know they were fools in their early years and sought forgiveness, or have been dead long enough for us to conveniently forget their unforgiven transgressions.
Who’s to say this young man could have survived a lengthy stay in prison (not a given in the USA) to pay for his crimes to return triumphantly from the depths of hell to become a champion of women’s rights and prison reform?
And if you look at the social media outpouring for him, you’ll realize there’s a chance this dude could have turned things around. He poured his soul into his music, and apparently a lot of people resonated with the messages of his Emo Rap songs and helped them through tough times. Is that worth nothing?
Doesn’t matter now, because he’s gone. We’ll never know if he could have turned that corner. And that is a tragedy, no matter how you look at it.
“The death of a young person for no reason is an apocalypse.”
― Dave Eggers
