Pitchfork acquired the 27-minute tape from the Miami-Dade County state attorney’s office. According to the office, both the prosecution and XXXTentacion’s defense considered the tape a confession. (Criminal cases against XXXTentacion, whose real name is Jahseh Onfroy, were closed after his death. His most recent defense attorney did not return Pitchfork’s emails or phone calls prior to deadline.) The state attorney’s office provided the name of the person who made the recording, an acquaintance of XXXTentacion’s; the person declined to comment to Pitchfork. The state attorney’s office did not provide the identities of other people on the tape, and their identities are unclear. In the recording, XXXTentacion’s acquaintances can be heard telling him that he cannot have “private time” with the alleged victim and trying to talk him down from thoughts of suicide.
On the tape, in addition to the threats against his ex-girlfriend, XXXTentacion also referred to a stabbing incident in Deerfield Beach, Florida, saying, “I’m on [Miami] New Times for stabbing, how many people they put in the news? They said three, it was eight.” (On January 21, 2016, a local Florida newspaper reported that police were “searching for the person who stabbed three people during a fight in Deerfield Beach.” There is no record of anyone being charged with the stabbing, but a Broward County Sheriff’s Office report from the incident states that a witness “saw an unknown black male with tattoos on his face swinging a knife in multiple directions.”) XXXTentacion also admitted to stabbing a former manager, an incident that he was arrested for in Orange County, Florida, on July 14, 2016, before being released on bond shortly afterward. These acts of violence were mentioned on the tape to explain why his ex-girlfriend was scared for her life. “She’s seen this shit,” XXXTentacion said. “She know.”
After going to jail over the allegations in October 2016, XXXTentacion went on to top the Billboard albums chartand he has continued to galvanize debate even after his passing, breaking a streaming recordpreviously held by Taylor Swift. His comments in the tape further hinted at some of the bleak themes in his music. “You ever seen somebody get their tongue cut out? … You ever seen somebody get raped? … You ever seen somebody try to kill your mom in front of you?” he asked an unidentified man, by way of explaining how events he had witnessed affected his own violent behavior. “Every night you go to sleep and you remember what you seen and you remember how it felt and you remember that horrible feeling in your soul. Nobody can comfort you. It’s something I gotta deal with.”