At 4 p.m. on June 18, 2018, outside the Riva Motorsports motorcycle dealership in Deerfield Beach, Florida, a rising star in the rap industry fell with the sound of several heartbreaking gunshots. The victim, Jesse Dwyane O'Flo, was robbed and shot dead by several gunmen, and his stage name, known to the world, was xxxTentacion.
X was born on January 23, 1998 in Planteson, Florida, USA, and he moved with his family to Loudhill. X's parents are Jamaican, but in an interview in 2017, X revealed that he has multiple ethnic ancestry from Egypt, Syria, India and Italy.
If you've ever seen a movie called "Florida Paradise," you should have a general understanding of the environment in which XXXTENTACION grew up.
And even if you haven't seen it, when we list keywords such as "America", "minority", "low income", etc., and you connect them again, the first impression that comes to mind should be words such as "violence", "divorce", "drugs" and so on.
X has a total of 3 half-siblings, and for his mother's personal reasons, he has been able to live with his grandmother since he was a child.
At the age of six, he had to regularly attend government-organized activities to help teenagers grow up, on the grounds that at a young age he had stabbed a man who was trying to attack his mother.
And when X was ten years old, his father was sentenced to 9 years in prison in Arizona, USA, for drug problems...
In junior high school, by chance, X was introduced to new metal, heavy rock, and rap, and developed a keen interest in music. X's grandmother was thrilled to see this and encouraged X to join the school choir to prevent him from learning badly.
However, the good times did not last long, and X was expelled from the choir for beating up his classmates. This incompatibility with the school also led X to make the decision to withdraw from school in the tenth grade.
In a later interview, he said that he was not the kind of extroverted, athletic student that American high schools liked, and as long as he stayed in school, he would be full of frustration and insecurity.
But soon after X was freed from the school's walls, he was surrounded by another wall — between 2013 and 2014, X was sentenced to about nine months in prison by a local juvenile detention center for illegally holding a gun.
In the detention center, XXXTENTACION met one of the nobles of his rap career, Ski Mask the Slump God, who had worked with his higher brothers on One Punch Man.
Under his guidance, X's rap skills have been further enhanced, and in 2014, the two formed the label Members Only, which has more than 20 members to date.
In March of that year, X released a song on SoundCloud for the first time using the stage name XXXTENTACION. In Spanish, Tentacion means seduction, while XXX represents the unknown on the one hand and the beginning of many foreign films on the other.
Before that, he had also named himself the "Father of Heroin". Some foreign netizens interpret these two names as: X is a person who is desperately eager to be needed, so these two names have a lot to do with desire and addiction.
In 2014, X released two albums, but like most rap newcomers, they didn't get much attention, and perhaps for this reason, it didn't take long for X to take both albums off the shelves.
At present, most of the mainstream music platforms in China, almost no trace of these two albums, if you are interested, you can leave a message in the comment area, we will arrange it for everyone as soon as possible.
The work that made XXXTentacion really catch fire was the single "Look At Me!" released on December 31, 2015. The song made its mark on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in February 2017.
Reading this, I believe that everyone must have a question in their hearts: why did this song get so much attention more than a year after its release? After all, Douyin was not as popular overseas as it is now. To figure this out, we have to start with another european and American rapper.
On January 28, 2017, Drake rehearsed his new song "KISS My Teeth" at a concert in Amsterdam.
After the performance, a section of the sharp-eyed (perhaps ear-tip) fans discovered that the rhythm of the song was similar to xxxTentacion's Look At Me! Similar, but because X was in prison for illegally entering the house at the time, he did not immediately make too many statements.
After receiving a suspended sentence, XXXTentacion gave an interview to Radio Miami. In interviews, he claimed that Drake had contacted DJs he had contacted. The DJ told Drake that he should go to X's agent, but Drake's team didn't.
After the interview, X and his fans went online accusing Drake of stealing his own style. In an interview with DJ Semetex, Drake, another client, admitted that he had never heard of XXXTentacion and Look At Me before the controversy occurred. In addition, he hopes that people can seriously compare their songs.
X didn't give up after hearing Drake's statement, and he continued to attack Drake on social media. In one of IG's time-limited updates, he even told his fans that he knew a secret from Drake, who threatened him and would kill him if he said it.
After XXXTentacion was shot in 2018, this time-limited dynamic was also believed by many fans to be the basis for Drake's killing. Of course, this is a later story.
To be sure, this beef undoubtedly greatly increased his popularity for X, who was tepid at the time. In May 2017, X released rap mixtape Revenge, which peaked at number 44 on the U.S. Billboard Albums Chart. A month later, X was named "Newcomer of the Year" by hip-hop magazine XXL.
In August of the same year, X released his debut solo studio album 17, which finished second on the Billboard Albums chart with 87,000 first-week sales. The album was also shortlisted for Best R&B Album at the 25th Billboard Music Awards and won the Most Popular Soul or R&B Album Award at the 46th American Music Awards. Two months later, X and Caroline Records signed a $6 million contract.
Although the achievements of musical works are impressive, xxXTentacion's works have always been in a state of mixed reviews, whether in Europe, the United States or China. For example, his self-directed Look At Me! In the MV, there have been pictures of the execution of boys.
Many of his singles have also been removed from mainstream European and American music platforms such as Spotify because they involve reaction. In addition, X is not the kind of rapper who is good at relying on repetition, accompaniment, or flow to attract listeners, which makes some people hear Look At Me! ", I will feel that the production of this song is too simple.
So what is the biggest highlight of XXXTentacion's work? There is no doubt that it is feelings. Whether it's the dark side or the light side, when you play X's music, I'm sure you can feel X's mentality when he composed and sang that song.
In 2017, X's friend Jocelyn Flores committed suicide in Miami due to depression, and after learning the news, X was so sad that he wrote two singles in a row, "Jocelyn Flores" and "Revenge" to commemorate his friend.
And this kind of music whose main purpose is to render emotions is what we commonly call Emo Rap. It was pioneered by American rapper Bones, and the likes of XXXTentacion and Lil Uzi Vert carried the style forward.
This type of music is generally associated with heartbreak, depression, inferiority, and redemption, and these emotions are more empathetic to contemporary teenagers than the exaggerated gold chains, cars, and tickets.
Therefore, whether it is YouTube or the well-known "net suppression cloud", the comments under Emo Rap will generally be much more than the traditional trap rap. If you want to get into this style of Chinese rap, some of the hit songs of Deep Blue Kids, Blood Boy and Li Jialong will be a good entry for you.
In March 2018, XXXTentacion released its second solo studio album? The album topped the Billboard Albums Chart with 131,000 first-week sales, and that was the highlight of his vocal career.
Just three months later, the tragedy we mentioned at the beginning occurred, and the news of X's murder spread around the world overnight, and countless fans who loved his music were heartbroken.
Although the murderers' every move at the scene proved to us that this was a robbery. However, I believe that most fans who are familiar with European and American rap do not think so, after all, X has offended too many people in the European and American rap circles.
25 days before the incident, Drake, who had been attacked countless times by X on social networks, released an album called "Scorpion", and the single "I'm upset" included in this album had the phrase "SMS, Triple X".
After the incident, many netizens interpreted SMS as send my shooters (sending out my gunners), and Triple X (three Xs) naturally refers to XXXTentacion.
However, if combined with the meaning of Drake's entire song, this "SMS, Triple X" is more like he wants to send restricted photos to someone else.
After all, if it's Google SMS, the first thing that pops up is the Short Message Service, and as for XXX, as mentioned earlier, it means restricted pornography.
In addition to Drake, who has been offended by X, there is also the well-known group Migos. In May 2017, Migos complained that today's teenagers don't like real rap and prefer "devil rap". X felt targeted, so he posted a video on social media abusing two members of Migos. Migos, though, is clearly not as friendly as Drake.
At the end of 2017, a video of a brawl was exposed online in which two men were fighting at the side of a flower bed. Not long after the video was exposed, X revealed on the social networking platform that the person in the video was himself, and Takeoff, a member of Migos, escaped and was chased by himself. However, for this matter, Migos officially did not make any response.
After XXXTentacion's death, his mother currently takes over all of his property. Subsequently, in December of that year, his mother pieced together all the semi-finished products of X and released a new album for him, SKINS.
Due to the fact that it is a semi-finished product, the standard of this album is much lower than before, but considering that people who like X should want to hear more of X's voice, this move is also understandable in the eyes of most fans.
However, a year later, in order to promote X's "half-finished new song" "Hearteater", X's mother actually hired XXXTentacion's ex-girlfriend Geneva to star in the MV.
You know, in 2017, Geneva once charged X with abuse, violence and other crimes. As a result, most fans began to think that X's mother was over-consuming her son.
Seeing this, you may say that XXXTentacion deserves it, after all, most of the grudges seem to be made by himself.
As soon as this statement came out, xxXTentacion fans will certainly make various rebuttals, and finally, everyone returned to the unsolvable question of "whether rapper should look at character first or look at the work first".
Frankly speaking, as a writer, after learning more about many European and American rappers in the past few months, I have begun to become overwhelmed by this issue. After all, most of the European and American rappers I write about are inseparable from crime.
Migos used to bring guns to college campuses, and if you were a student at that university and knew that someone had brought such a weapon to you, would you forgive them?
DMX has more than two dozen criminal experiences on Wikipedia, including cruel crimes such as animal cruelty, such as R.I.P.
Of course, XXXTentacion isn't dhumx yet, but if you know him well enough, you'll know he's been accused of domestic violence and robbery.
Therefore, before I have my own answer to the question of "looking at works or looking at personality", I have decided to reserve my position first, and I hope that everyone can enthusiastically express their views on this issue.
And if you look at it from the perspective of musicians, the greatness of XXXTentacion is no doubt, after all, the most popular rapper in the NetEase Cloud Music European and American Singers Chart, and "SAD! The 1 billion views on Spotify are enough to show the fans' love and respect for him.
The Slovaks are gone, and when will the next rapper with a powerful influence like XXXTentacion appear?