Why XXXTentacion’s violent confession matters after his death

The murder of Jahseh Onfroy, better known as XXXtentacion, ended a number of things. It ended the burgeoning career of a Floridian rapper who had achieved extraordinary popularity by the age of 20. It ended the life of a troubled young man coping publicly with mental health issues, something expressed through his provocative art and social media presence. It also ended any chance at bringing Onfroy to justice for the multiple criminal charges against him – including assault, battery, false imprisonment and witness tampering – that were all part of the same domestic violence case.

The alarming details laid out in the victim’s testimony from January 2017 portrayed Onfroy as monstrous, his apparent jealousies and insecurities leading him to repeatedly commit horrific acts of abuse towards her. Her accusations laid out incident after incident where his psychological and physical violence escalated, culminating with an appalling attack after she revealed that she was pregnant with his child. Onfroy entered a not guilty plea following his arrest, which expediently satisfied his growing fanbase and prompted a new narrative painting his accuser as a liar.

With the disclosure this week of a secret recording of Onfroy made without his knowledge, we know now that she was telling the truth. In it, he confesses to unnamed acquaintances to having assaulted and terrorized his ex-girlfriend in no uncertain terms. While not speaking to the specifics of each occurrence presented in the victim’s testimony, he admitted to having hurt her physically, referenced her knowledge of the violence he had inflicted on other people, and threatened to kill her. By Onfroy’s own admission, she had reason to fear for her life.

While some fans decried the release by the Miami-Dade county state attorney’s office of the damning audio as disrespectful of the dead, this reaction in turn disrespects a still living victim. After extricating herself from Onfroy’s reach and going to the authorities, this young woman could not escape the collective wrath of the rapper’s fanbase. While his supporters repeatedly cited his good works and floated the possibility, had he lived, of turning his life around a la Malcolm X, many in that same camp had spent the better part of two years defaming her online, engaging in targeted harassment, doxxing, and even offline stalking. Rather than separating the art from the artist, a dubious proposal at best, they subscribed to conspiracy theories or otherwise took his denial as both fact and justification.

Seeing as Onfroy went to his untimely grave dishonestly asserting his innocence and furthermore failing to use his powerful platform to mitigate the constant persecution experienced by his victim, such defenses seem undeservedly charitable in context. Though this revealing recording was made without Onfroy’s knowledge, its theoretically inadmissible status in court doesn’t preclude its value. Some argue that as Onfroy can no longer face punishment by the state, his guilt no longer matters and that reporting on this recording is futile. But given what his victim went through, both at his hands and at those of his most virulent fans, the vindication of her claims does in fact matter, even if solely as a moral victory.

There is no question that Onfroy suffered in his 20 years on this planet, that he dealt daily with issues of mental health, that he was failed in some of the systematic ways America fails so many youths of color. There too is no doubt that his music positively influenced the lives of many people, especially teenagers who related to his often emotionally bare lyrics. Those who mourn him have reason to do so.

But none of that erases what happened to this young woman, and no amount of talent or recognition of talent can change that or diminish how his self-serving denials put her in further harm’s way. As his single Sad! enjoys its 33rd week on the Billboard Hot 100, as the individuals and companies handling his business affairs and profiting off his catalog plot posthumous releases, this new audio of Onfroy openly admitting what he did to her is XXXtentacion’s true legacy.

Gary Suarez is a freelance music journalist