XXXTentacion - ?

Yes what *could* be the difference between a chart that gauges how many moms paid to own an Adele album to play in their second minivan’s CD player and how many times something was streamed on SoundCloud by a teenager who can’t afford the monthly $9.99 Spotify charge. What could possibly be the benefit of determining popularity that way?

i mean, dancing on the grave of a dead person, unbookmarked

― lost in sublimation (Ross)

ross i think there's something you should know about this board

Unperson’s analysis of his popularity couldn’t be more wrong

Maybe, but who cares. He's not Tupac. He's not Biggie. He's not even Jam Master Jay. Five years from now he'll be a footnote even among those who are most ardent about un-dirtying his history this week. Let him disappear into the noise and be glad he can no longer beat anyone half to death.

That would’ve been the ideal thing. But he got murdered and now he’s some sort of misunderstood genius and a martyr.

I didn’t wish his death, I actually wish he was alive so he would get fat and fade out like everyone else.

streaming numbers measure the actual time people spend listening to music, and x's streaming numbers were astounding

the argument the press tried to make that his success is completely down to the infamy he attained as a result of his extramusical misdeeds is worth hearing but it is also indisputable that people were hearing the music and they were hearing it a *lot*

seems fully improbable to suggest that a culture so fully soaked and submerged in the dude's work will somehow manage to completely shake out the stain just on the basis of the absence of his body

to have reservations about an artist, especially an artist accused of the things x was accused of, is totally well and good and healthy, but to dismiss the very real and indisputable evidence of his massive popularity doesn't do any favors for the already very difficult conversation surrounding the artist's work and legacy

I'm fine with any and all attempts to bury the guy's legacy before it can really become established in "the canon." If people rediscover him in 25 years, he'll still be a shitstain, but the real damage would have already been mitigated.

no critical conversation is going to or was ever going to have any effect at all on whether or not the dude is remembered or influential or not

pretending otherwise is unhealthy

y'all i think music and young people are going to be ok. sheesh

https://m.imgur.com/fYI8Win

http://abc7.com/large-crowd-gets-rowdy-during-memorial-for-xxxtentacion/3624899/

Johnny Fever OTM.

found Whiney's piece impressively convincing, but can't help but wonder if invoking the rock narrative is doing XXX any favors

I guess it serves to place the music in a "serious" context, but perhaps somewhere along the rock'n'roll and DIY hardcore analogies we lose sight of the music in point

https://www.stereogum.com/2002354/the-tangled-legacy-of-xxxtentacion/franchises/sounding-board/

That's a great piece

+1 very good Tom Breihan

Hearty co-sign.

yeah that was great
glad he mentioned Jimmy Wopo, he was really great RIP

"Elm Street" was a goon fav
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-agUlNitPE

Just to add to the chorus: really good piece.

Last year, one of them went differently. While Playboi Carti, Ugly God, and Madeintyo did their own supremely halfassed verses, cheering each other on, XXXTentacion lurked in the background, silent. When it was his turn to rap, the beat abruptly cut off. He crouched to the ground, froze, and grumbled, “If the world ever has an apocalypse, I will kill all of you fuckers.” The other rappers weren’t sure what to do. They stood there reverent, or maybe scared, or maybe just puzzled, while their supposed peer gave his slam-poetry jeremiad about annihilating humanity. It remains a strange fucking moment.

I don’t like this pov, feels like mythifying him as this outsider rebel genius and I’m not seeing the reverance, scare or puzzled expression in any of the other rappers when he was performing because it’s too fucking dark to even see them.

Everyone of them was lurking in the background silent while one of them had the spotlight. It was planned beforehand to cut the beat when he started, it’s not this rockist “fuck the system” moment for the books. He didn’t go unplug the dj and front each rapper and burn the whole thing down. It all went according to plan.

and just to add on. the illuminati is dangerous. i bet you they tried to get x to sell his soul. but x is humble and he ain’t about doing that shit for fame. he got famous by himself! and drake didn’t fucking like that! so they got his ass man ):

— rochelle grace (@rochelllegrace) June 19, 2018

i love it when writers use "maybe" multiple times in a sentence, it really makes me think they know what they're talking about xp

i thought whiney's piece was good incidentally

yeah that xxxtentacion quote is dark, like something ed o'neill would say in one of his wayne's world scenes.

I’ll be honest I didn’t read it through I was annoyed at the media pushing this 2edgy4me clown as a martyr. I might have misread the intention of the article but the title is either clickbait or tells me all I needed to read.

And well, after I read that part I quoted above I thought “oh this is gonna be good, I need to see this” and then I saw the actual video and the whole thing is so lame. There’s no conflict in there, that’s just the writer overhyping edgy teen poetry.... again to push this mythos of this violent, disturbed genius. To me it seems like the other 3 people on stage didn’t give a fuck about it tbh. They were certainly not scared of him and why should they be? They weren’t women.

I hadn't heard Jimmy Wopo but I liked "Elm Street" and I watched an interview and he's, um, disarmingly does to earth and charming. This is so fucked up

To me it seems like the other 3 people on stage didn’t give a fuck about it tbh.

Yeah they look like they could easily be thinking, "Whatever..."

It’s not like he had the mic at sunday church.

XXXTentacion breaks Taylor Swift's single-day streaming record on Spotify https://t.co/QCoqKMao2o pic.twitter.com/t9UO2Je3jw

— Stereogum (@stereogum) June 20, 2018

nobODy i knOW HAD evER HEARD OF tHiS Guy. BillbOArd ChARtS dON’t mEan JACK shiT Anymore.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DTHmLUHVwAIdRTY.jpg:large

glad that piece of shit aint getting a penny of it though

I bought this stuff at a gas station once... ended up getting gang-tased by 6 cops. Did they finally recall it?

i think so

https://i.redd.it/k2bv1jqtja511.jpg

...

denied entry into the uk. hurray

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/arts/music/xxxtentacion-arrest-murder-charge.html

xp oh wait i got confused with this bell end and 6six9ine or w/e, the other bell end

"yeah that xxxtentacion quote is dark, like something ed o'neill would say in one of his wayne's world scenes."

this is a very good burn

(and accurate)

xp oh wait i got confused with this bell end and 6six9ine or w/e, the other bell end

Or Trump?

Last year, one of them went differently. While Playboi Carti, Ugly God, and Madeintyo did their own supremely halfassed verses, cheering each other on, XXXTentacion lurked in the background, silent. When it was his turn to rap, the beat abruptly cut off. He crouched to the ground, froze, and grumbled, “If the world ever has an apocalypse, I will kill all of you fuckers.” The other rappers weren’t sure what to do. They stood there reverent, or maybe scared, or maybe just puzzled, while their supposed peer gave his slam-poetry jeremiad about annihilating humanity. It remains a strange fucking moment.

the gulf between this description and the muddled, awkward gunk that i observed when i actually watched the clip is grand canyon sized

Well, the world's a twisted place.

his misdeeds were reflective not of our culture of indifference to the mistreatment of women as a whole but reflective of teenagers' culture of indifference to pretty much everything

― we æt so many shimripl (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, June 19, 2018 5:52 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this resonates, but it's not just an indifference to me, but the inability to figure out what things have an actual weight in life. the inability to figure out what's going too far, what's forgivable, what's part of playing a persona and what is actually showing who you are. there are so many people who put on cynical personas or do things for a reaction and it takes a lot of development to make it beyond that. some people never change

the cynic in me says that jahseh onfroy crafted this stage persona that was emotionally stunted, dark, and violent and he happened to be an emotionally stunted, violent kid off stage. maybe he decided that was all he had to give the world, or never felt like showing even the people in his life that he had more than that

there are so many people who put on cynical personas or do things for a reaction

Some of them in this very thread!

Hadn’t read him in a while but it’s a standard Breihan thing, he’s often a really compelling writer and his enthusiasm is infectious until you see the thing he’s super excited about and it turns out to be kind of dumb.

From Pitchfork: But despite making a handful of the scene’s marquee hits, the 19-year old born Jahseh Onfroy stands apart from his SoundCloud rap peers. That distance was plainly illustrated in this year’s XXL Freshman cypher: while Playboi Carti, Ugly God, and Madeintyo bounce around, hyping one another with ad-libs and cooking dances, XXXTentacion lurks motionless in the background, head hung low. Then Sonny Digital cuts the beat, and X crouches to the floor, expressionless, rapping in a chilling monotone: “And if the world ever has an apocalypse, I will kill all of you fuckers.” There is a sense of unease when Digital brings the beat back; whatever just happened, no one is sure how to follow it.

From Stereogum: Last year, one of them went differently. While Playboi Carti, Ugly God, and Madeintyo did their own supremely halfassed verses, cheering each other on, XXXTentacion lurked in the background, silent. When it was his turn to rap, the beat abruptly cut off. He crouched to the ground, froze, and grumbled, “If the world ever has an apocalypse, I will kill all of you fuckers.” The other rappers weren’t sure what to do. They stood there reverent, or maybe scared, or maybe just puzzled, while their supposed peer gave his slam-poetry jeremiad about annihilating humanity. It remains a strange fucking moment.

*chin-stroke emoji*