The Death of XXXTentacion | Last Days

On the afternoon of June 18th, 2018, 20-year-old Jussie Onfroy, better known to the world by his rap name, XXXTentacion, walked into a Bank of America in South Florida and asked to withdraw $250,000 in cash. The bank couldn't give him that much, so he settled for $50,000, 500 crisp, $100 bills still wrapped in bank bands, which he stuffed into a Louis Vuitton bag. he got back into his black BMW i8 with his uncle, Leonard Kerr, and drove to Riva Motorsports in Deerfield Beach. X, as his friends called him, had come to Riva to look at motorcycles, and there was something remarkable in just how ordinary the errand must have seemed to him. He had grown up with very little stability or money, shuttled between relatives and other homes, eventually living mostly with his grandmother in Lauder Hill. He had been kicked out of school, spent time in juvenile detention, and only a few years earlier had been uploading homemade music to SoundCloud, with no record deal and no obvious path out of the circumstances in which he grew up. But somehow, by the summer of 2018, X had made it. Really made it. His second album had debuted at number one three months earlier, and his songs had been streamed hundreds of millions of times. He was driving a car that cost well into six figures, carrying a Louis Vuitton bag stuffed with $50,000 in cash, and spending an otherwise unremarkable Monday afternoon wandering through a motorcycle showroom deciding what he might like to buy. For a kid who had spent much of his childhood bouncing between homes in South Florida, this was an almost unimaginable transformation. At 20 years old, X had enough money that he could walk into a bank, withdraw more cash than many people earn in a year, and go shopping for expensive toys. What X did not know was that two other men had walked into the motorcycle dealership right behind him. Their names were Dedrick Williams and Robert Allen. They had arrived in a rented Dodge Journey with two other men, Michael Boatwright and Trayvon Newsom. According to prosecutors, the four had been driving around, looking for someone to rob, when Williams spotted X's distinctive BMW in the Riva parking lot. Williams and Allen went inside to make sure the man who was driving the car was really X. The dealership's surveillance cameras captured what happened next. While X browsed motorcycles, Williams and Allen walked through the showroom. At one point, they passed close enough to see him clearly. They knew it was him. And then they did something that would later become one of the strangest details in the case. They purchased black neoprene motorcycle masks and then returned to their car where Boatwright and Newsom waited. Allen would later testify that he became nervous. He and Williams had already walked into the store with their faces uncovered. The surveillance cameras had seen them. Maybe, Allen suggested, they should forget the whole thing. They didn't. Instead, Newsom and Boatwright put the masks over their faces and the group laid in wait until X and his uncle left the store and got back into the BMW and began to pull out of the parking lot. Williams, in the driver's seat, pulled the Dodge forward and blocked X's path. And then Boatwright and Newsom jumped out, carrying guns, and ran towards the car. X's uncle managed to escape through the passenger side. Boatwright stood by while Newsom reached into the driver's side window and tried to wrestle the Louis Vuitton bag containing the $50,000 away from X. X fought back, but Newsom eventually pried it out of his hands. At that point, they had what they came for. The robbery was over. They could have run back to their car and disappeared. But instead, Michael Boatwright raised his gun and fired. X was struck three times in his neck and chest and collapsed dead in the driver's seat. Boatwright and Newsom ran back into the waiting SUV, and the four men sped away with the money. Paramedics were called, and they rushed X to Broward Health Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Jussie Onfroy was just 20 years old. I'm Jason Beckerman. I'm Derek Hoffman. This is Last Days, XXXTentacion. The four men involved in X's murder left behind a trail of evidence that led authorities right to them. There was surveillance footage from Riva and additional video along the men's route. There were cell phone records and location data. There was evidence connecting phones to the rented Dodge Journey. There were social media posts and videos. And most importantly, the men had allowed themselves to be seen before the robbery even began. Investigators quickly focused on Dedrick Williams because he had walked into Riva without concealing his identity. Employees recognized him as a previous customer and surveillance footage captured his face and clothing. Among the details that drew investigators' attention were distinctive orange sandals Williams wore into the store. Detectives subsequently found photographs on his social media account showing him wearing the same shoes. Williams was arrested just two days after the murder. From there, investigators worked outward. The Dodge Journey had been rented the night before the killing, and cell phone records helped establish the movements of the men traveling in it. Investigators eventually identified Boatwright and Newsom as the two gunmen and Allen as the fourth participant. Evidence recovered during the investigation increasingly enabled prosecutors to reconstruct not simply who had been present, but where the men had been before and after X was killed. Then there was the money. Only hours after X was shot, cell phone video showed members of the group smiling, dancing, and displaying fistfuls of $100 bills. For prosecutors, the strength of the case was that no single piece of evidence had to carry it. Surveillance video placed members of the group at Riva. Phone evidence tracked their movements. The rented SUV connected them to the crime, and their own recordings showed them with large quantities of cash afterwards. And if there was any remaining doubt that investigators would be able to prove their case, it evaporated when one of the four men, Robert Allen, turned state's evidence. In exchange for prosecutors' agreement to reduce Allen's charge from first to second degree murder, he agreed to testify to everything that happened in the days before and after the robbery, and the fact that they went out that morning for the express purpose of looking for someone to rob. Allen testified that he became nervous about the plan and tried to back out, but the others decided to continue. Allen said he did nothing to facilitate the robbery. It was Williams who drove the Dodge, Newsome who wrestled the money away from X, and Boatwright who killed him. Allen said he sat in the car the whole time. He was just with the wrong group of people at the wrong time. Derek, we know all about the felony murder rule, right? It doesn't matter that he didn't do anything. What matters is that he set out to commit a felony with these other people, and somebody died as a result. We learned this in law school, right? That's right. That's why you're tagged with it as well. He says with the wrong group of people at the wrong time. He was out that day by his own admission to commit a felony, which is robbing someone at gunpoint, and he had to pay the consequence for it. But it was critical because he turned state's evidence. And this really, as strong as the case was, you have surveillance footage, you have all of their whereabouts, the cell phone location data. It's always better to sort of tie a bow on things and have someone say, yes, it is what you're seeing on the surveillance footage. I was part of it. I was in the car. Every jury has one potential holdout, right? one potential person who wants to be a fly in the ointment and you want to be able to overwhelm that potential jury you're not playing to the full 12 member panel right you're talking to that one jury who's the most skeptical who's the most skeptical and we saw it very recently what was the case in the Lindsay Clancy case in the Lindsay Clancy case yeah you sometimes can't convince them no matter what you can do you can't convince them but in this case that's why you have as many pieces of evidence as possible you have him turn state's evidence but the felony murder rule it often comes up just for to talk about it in bank robbery cases or like very common liquor store robbery cases hold ups hold-ups where you go in without any intent to kill somebody. Things go wrong. Even if the person who owns the liquor store slips and falls during the robbery and hits their head or has a heart attack, you're charged with felony murder because I was there to commit a felony. But for the felony, they wouldn't have died. And that's what they're looking for. But despite the apparent simplicity of the case, it took nearly five years for it to go to trial. Boatwright, Newsom, and Williams all pled not guilty, insisting they were not involved in X's murders despite the seemingly overwhelming evidence against them. In February 2023, all three went on trial together in Broward County, Florida. Prosecutors presented the murders fundamentally simple. Four men had gone looking for someone to rob, spotted a wealthy young celebrity carrying an expensive bag, followed him, blocked his car, and killed him when he resisted. Boatwright was identified as the shooter, Newsom as the second armed robber, Williams as the driver and the central participant in the robbery, and Allen as an accomplice who would remain in the SUV and was now cooperating with the government. Defense attorneys attacked both the investigation and Allen's credibility. They emphasized weaknesses in the physical evidence, including the absence of DNA evidence, directly tying some of the defendants to X, and argued that Allen had an enormous incentive to shift responsibility towards the other men. But there was just too much evidence against them, and on March 20, 2023, the jury returned guilty verdicts against all three men for first-degree murder and armed robbery. Boatwright, Newsome, and Williams were subsequently sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, with Boatwright receiving additional consecutive punishment for his role as the trigger man. Allen's decision to cooperate dramatically changed his fate. He ultimately received a seven-year prison sentence followed by probation. You know, we talk about snitching and Tekashi 6ix9ine and all of that stuff. Allen changed his life. He changed the trajectory of his life. He does have to live with that label. And Tekashi lives with it, but he lives with it out of prison. And I think that was a big part of this because it did make the case a lot stronger. It made it sort of a fait accompli that these men were going to serve the rest of their lives in prison. But I found that interesting. The thing in this case is how senseless it was. And you discussed this already. They didn't need to kill him. The commission of the crime had been completed. They had the bag. There was resistance. Obviously, he didn't want to be robbed. By the time they shot him, they had the bag. They had the bag and they were escaping and they could have just, and they would have faced much less severe consequences than if they hadn't committed a murder. We talked about this. You and I are friends. I will happily snitch on you if it helps my case. Happily. Happily. And that goes for everybody else in this room. Tony Branson, we're snitching on you if it helps us. Sticks and stones will break my bones if you call me that, but you're going down, Jay. With the convictions, the legal story of X's murder was essentially finished. But explaining why the death of a 20-year-old rapper produced such an enormous reaction requires going back much further. Because the person who had been murdered inside that BMW had already become one of the most complicated young stars in America. X grew up in Plantation, Florida. Incidentally, that's where I grew up. Plantation, Florida and had a wildly unstable childhood his father was largely absent his mother struggled to care for him and X spent significant periods living with his grandmother and other people violence appeared early he was repeatedly involved in fights and was expelled from school and eventually spent time in juvenile detention he would later tell stories about both the violence he witnessed and the violence he committed as a child music gradually became an outlet after leaving juvenile detention X began recording and uploading songs online became associated with other young South Florida rappers and helped form the collective Members Only there was an intensity to both his personality and his music that attracted attention but the violence in his life did not disappear as his audience grew instead some of the most serious allegations against him arrived just as he was becoming famous at 17 years old X was arrested on charges including aggravated battery of a pregnant woman domestic abuse by strangulation and false imprisonment involving his former girlfriend she described horrific abuse X publicly denied aspects of the allegations and the case didn't reach trial before he was killed after his death however a secretly recorded 2016 conversation emerged in which X discussed violence against his former girlfriend and also spoke about stabbing other people that history created an uncomfortable contradiction at the center of X's legacy XXXTentacion made extraordinarily vulnerable music about depression loneliness suicide rage and emotional pain and countless listeners genuinely felt understood by it at the same time there was substantial evidence that he had inflicted terrible pain on other people. Any attempt to explain why he mattered has to leave room for both parts of the story. To understand why X became so important so quickly, it also helps to understand where he came from musically. SoundCloud had begun changing the normal route into the record business. A generation earlier, a young rapper generally needed some combination of a local following, a manager, producers, mixtapes, radio support, and eventually a label willing to invest money. SoundCloud reduced much of that machinery to an internet connection. Artists could record songs cheaply, upload them immediately, and communicate directly with listeners without waiting for anyone in the industry to approve them. SoundCloud's a huge part of this story, Jason. I mean, he's part of what I think of as a triumvirate of SoundCloud-made artists. You've got, you know, XXXTentacion, you've got Juice WRLD, who also died of a drug overdose, and you've got Pop Smoke, who was murdered as well. So they really form sort of this you know it's this tragic period in music because SoundCloud is still very important Nas X uploaded to SoundCloud you know uh Old Town Road it's it heightens the tragedy for me because there is a sort of a bootstrap element to like democratization we all know it still happens these record agencies control artists right they they give so much to the artist up front but then they have them it's sort of the bargain with the devil right yes where a young artist will give everything they have including ownership of all their music to some record label that is going to take a huge portion of what they make forever and based on putting an investment in that artist that was the business model but this you could generate and cultivate an audience without that right right obviously Christina Grimmie did the same thing on YouTube and we talked about her murder there are there are hundreds of thousands of people maybe more who put their music up on SoundCloud and we can name a handful of them who who may who did well for themselves but nevertheless that handful tells a really important story about the democratization of content that we've seen in the in the in the recent generation SoundCloud YouTube etc the imperfections became part of the aesthetic songs were clipped bass was distorted and the vocals often sounded deliberately blown out tracks sometimes lasted barely two minutes and frequently revolved around emotionally charged subjects like death depression and suicide these were among the building blocks of musical style that became known as emo rap and while X incorporated an unusually wide range of genres into his music you can easily hear the influence of punk rock and R&B and what he recorded he repeatedly returned to the sadness, alienation, and despair that defined emo at its core. The song that launched X was Look At Me. It was recorded cheaply and sounded like it. The bass was so distorted that the recording seemed almost damaged, while X's vocal was aggressive to the point of being abrasive. The track was confrontational and wildly sexual, almost the antithesis of what radio programmers traditionally considered a hit. We would love to play the song, but it is so, it's really vividly sexual. Even referencing it, I'm blushing. It's a very aggressive song, and I've heard, my share of aggressive rap. We'd be happy to listen to it, but listen for yourself. It's a great song, but it's just, it's wild. It's a lot. It's a lot for a podcast. Look at me spread through SoundCloud and social media and eventually reached the Billboard Hot 100, transforming X from an underground internet phenomenon into a national figure. The song also captured something essential about the emerging SoundCloud aesthetic. Roughness was no longer necessarily evidence that a recording was unfinished. More broadly, X's rise demonstrated to young artists that they no longer had to wait for the traditional music industry to decide they were ready. An audience could make that decision first. As X's music began to attract a wider audience, it also caught the attention of established artists, most notably DJ and producer Diplo, who agreed to work with him. What followed was the period in which X made the record that transformed him from a provocative SoundCloud phenomenon into a genuine star. Released in August 2017, the album Seventeen was consumed with depression, heartbreak, and suicide, but it also revealed a striking evolution in X's musicality the aggression and distortion that had defined his early work were still there but now they existed alongside acoustic guitars sparse piano and haunting melodies revealing an artist whose range was far greater than his earliest songs had suggested here's the song Revenge off that album in which he sings about the debilitating sadness that can come after a failed relationship I told you a long time ago that I was a fan of X, which is a real departure from my normal musical taste. But I don't know how I discovered him, how I personally discovered him. You're not a yacht rocker, though. You like Depeche Mode. You like other bands. I hate Depeche Mode. Oh, your wife loves Depeche Mode. My least favorite band. that's right all time but no he just he he you listen to his stuff it's just good it's yeah he's talented there's a lot of pop sensibilities in there but there's also a lot of R&B deep R&B which sort of where my musical taste gravitates so he was a natural sort of person that i gravitated towards and like on my sort of you know for you know 40 greatest songs of all time, Sad is up there we'll talk about it in a minute, yeah look he was that good, he was smart, introspective, the themes were very complex and emotional. I do think when he got with Diplo, I've heard some of the earlier recordings and they're so raw. And you know there's talent in there because you can hear it shining through. But with Diplo, you got that polish. And that's what exposed him to the pop sensibilities that made him a national figure. When he died, he was an important person already at that point. He was not a SoundCloud phenomenon that we're just lamenting. He had made it. That's why he was able to go to the bank and grab 50K. So the album 17, it's barely 22 minutes long. every there there's all the songs are very short, nothing almost nothing extraneous in the album at all it's being it sort of comes across in many parts it's like spoken word poetry, the music goes down his voice is sort of all you're hearing, i mean here's a kid whose life outside the studio there was totally violent chaotic, he's he's really you know he's not necessarily living the most the the life you would have liked for him to lead or whatever but it was chaotic deeply troubling outside the studio, he gets in the studio and he is in complete control, music was a sanctuary for him, obviously. And on this album also is the song Jocelyn Flores. It's really what sort of, you know, I think transcended for many people the entire SoundCloud wave and brought him into the mainstream. Have a listen. So Kendrick Lamar publicly praised the album 17 and encouraged people to listen to it. And the album reached number two on the Billboard 200. X was no longer a fringe artist gaining traction in rap circles. He was a bona fide mainstream star with a huge fan base. That audience became even larger with his next album, the title of which was a simple question mark. And this time, the commercial breakthrough was enormous. The album debuted in March 2018 at number one, moving 131,000 units in the first week. In its defining song, Sad, a simple melody that combined lyrics about fear, abandonment, and suicide, was a sensation. It remains to this day one of the defining hits of the emo rap genre, and one of the most critically acclaimed songs of the last decade it's an incredible song i mean i i you know and the fact that he was number two on the Billboard 200 that's the album list for Billboard, that means that he was not a one-hit wonder who who had one track people really gravitated towards the towards XXXTentacion as an artist, a fully formed artist that you wanted to listen to all the tracks he had to offer it's really quite tragic and for three months X truly was on top of the world the kid who had built his audience by uploading songs to SoundCloud now commanded roughly a hundred thousand dollars for a concert appearance by June two songs from the album Sad and another single, Changes, were certified platinum. He was 20 years old and suddenly famous on a scale that would have been almost unimaginable just months before. And the numbers kept getting bigger. In early June, X was reportedly offered $10 million for his next album. For a kid who had grown up poor in South Florida, who had spent part of his adolescence in juvenile detention, and whose career had essentially begun with a microphone and an internet connection, the transformation was staggering. By June 2018, XXXTentacion was one of the biggest young artists in music and then in the flash of a muzzle it all ended in the wake of his death streams of his music surged and Sad climbed to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 X had spent much of his brief career writing about depression self-destruction and death now in one of the stranger turns in modern pop music his biggest commercial achievement came only after he was gone as we talked about earlier prior to his death X had developed a creative relationship with Diplo as they worked together on the album 17 and the two had also developed an unlikely friendship. In fact, just days before his murder, X texted Diplo with an idea for his next album, and they agreed to collaborate on developing and producing the tracks. Diplo invited X to Los Angeles that very week so they could begin talking about it. Diplo was still wondering whether X was going to make that trip when the news came from Florida that he'd been shot and killed. Hours later, Diplo posted a tribute that captured both the contradictions he saw in the 20-year-old and the sense that, whatever anyone thought of his life he had already lived, it was greatness left untapped He said, quote, this kid was a genius, true artist. He made his own rules. He had his faults and was willing to pay for his sins. But he was young and he worked so hard on his own self. He wanted to be better. He loved everyone so much. He lived for every kid out there. He had the biggest imagination. I will always love this kid. He was going to do so much more.