This article contains discussion of domestic violence and assault.Pitchfork has obtained secretly recorded audio of XXXTentacion—Miami rapper Jahseh Onfroy—discussing the domestic abuse allegations against him. In the tape—recorded some time around his arrest in October 2016—Onfroy, who maintained innocence in regards to the allegations until his death, speaks openly on his instances of violence toward his ex-girlfriend, who levelled the allegations of abuse against him. “She fell through on every occasion until now,” he says in a one-minute excerpt of the 27-minute tape. “But I started fucking her up because she made one mistake. And from there, the whole cycle went down.”“Now she’s scared. That girl is scared for her life. Which I understand. You seen me. You know what I do to people,” he continues. Elsewhere in the tape, acquired from the Miami-Dade County attorney’s office, Onfroy states “I will kill that bitch if she play with me.”He also takes credit for an unsolved stabbing that occurred in Deerfield Beach in January 2016, saying “All of them boys knew, … I’m on New Times for stabbing, how many people they put in the news? They said three, it was eight. In Deerfield.”Onfroy rose to prominence in 2016 as one of the spearheads of 'Soundcloud rap', and quickly crossed over into the mainstream, with his single "Sad!" reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and his latest record ? debuting at number one on the Billboard 200, despite allegations of domestic abuse from his then-pregnant ex-girlfriend in October 2016. As a result, Onfroy was charged with aggravated battery of a pregnant victim, domestic battery by strangulation, false imprisonment and witness tampering. He pleaded not guilty to all charges. Onfroy was shot dead in Miami earlier this year at the age of 20, but has remained a controversial figure in the rap scene.Read Pitchfork’s full report on the tape, and listen to the published excerpt, here.
