As it turned out, Hitt's story contained XXXTentacion's last public comments about the domestic abuse charges pending against him, as well as candid insights into the 20-year-old rapper's problematic youth and subsequent rise to fame and notoriety.
Click this link for a rundown of all of our contemporaneous XXXTentacion coverage: "XXXTentacion: An Annotated Timeline of New Times Coverage"
Original story is below:
While imprisoned on domestic abuse charges, rapper XXXTentacion, who was murdered this past June 18, made hundreds of phone calls. They were recorded and held as evidence by the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office. Yesterday, Pitchfork published one recording of the now-deceased rapper in which he admitted to abusing an ex-girlfriend and stabbing eight people. New Times has obtained 59 recordings of XXXTentacion, whose real name was
In one of the phone calls, taped October 27, 2016, from the Dade County Jail, Onfroy repeatedly demands his friends assault a teenager who used the rapper's phone while he was in jail and speaks dismissively about his ex-girlfriend, whom he had abused.
A friend who had the phone had fallen asleep, the rapper says on the tape. This allowed someone a else to take the phone and use it. Posts to Onfroy's social media accounts followed. Onfroy goes on to say his Social Security number was on his phone.
"Beat that man's ass, bruh. Make sure that man get his ass beat," Onfroy says before abruptly changing the subject to his ex-girlfriend. "Not only did everybody know that situation about Geneva, not only that, I'm gonna let that ride because I don't really give a fuck about that bitch."
He goes on to say the friend who had taken Onfroy's phone (whom New Times will refer to as "Mike" because he is a minor) had used it to post on the rapper's Periscope account.
XXXTentation Jail Call 1
XXXTentation Jail Call 2
"Mike needs to get fucked up right now. Or when I get out, I'm gonna get another charge fucking him up. Someone needs to fuck him up and teach him a lesson. Mike needs to get his face fucked up.
"Fuck this nigga up now, bruh. Fuck his face up. A picture needs to be sent. One of y'all need to fuck that man up now," Onfroy demands.
"I'm going to talk to him," the man on the phone says.
"I don't want no talking, bruh," Onfroy responds. "That man
Later, in a conversation with a different friend, Onfroy continues to question why nobody immediately beat Mike after it became known he had used the rapper's phone.
"Who would wanna beat Mike, bruh?" his friend responds. "Mike is little as fuck — he can't hurt nobody. Mike is 16 years old."
"So y'all let the nigga use me, and nobody finds that wrong?" Onfroy says. "Everybody's some real fucked niggas, bruh... I'm tryna catch another fucking charge when I get out. I'm coming out next year with a fucking vengeance."
Onfroy then tells his friends to call Mike and put him on speaker.
"Hello?" the slightly high-pitched voice of a teenage boy answers.
"You know you fucked, right, Mike?" Onfroy says. "You know you stupid and you fucked, right?"
"What'd I do?" the boy asks.
"You know what you did... Stop fucking with me before I break your fucking neck, bruh... You a
Eventually, Onfroy demands Mike delete his SoundCloud account or get beaten. When Mike tries to defend himself, Onfroy says, "Shut the fuck up before I make somebody slap you and suck a dick on camera... You're a bitch, and I will show the world you are a bitch."
Throughout the four 30-minute phone conversations, which were all placed October 27, 2016, Onfroy berates his friends for letting other people into his house, where he has allowed his friends to sleep while he's in jail. "People are wearing my fucking clothes," he repeats dozens of times. "How'd my fucking laptop charger go missing, bruh?" (Laptop chargers generally cost $10 to $90.)
The then-18-year-old Onfroy was in jail for assaulting his ex-girlfriend. He had previously been arrested for stabbing his manager and would later be charged with violating house arrest.
Depositions in the now-closed domestic abuse case detail a horrific pattern of verbal and physical violence against his ex-girlfriend, who said he choked her, threatened to cut out her tongue, pressed scissors against her face, threatened to drown her while holding her head underwater, and threatened to use a barbecue fork to sexually assault her.
The 213 recorded phone calls obtained by the State Attorney's Office were key evidence in a dozen felony charges for witness tampering and harassing a witness filed in December 2017 after his ex-girlfriend withdrew her statement.
A judge sealed the phone recordings while Onfroy's criminal case was ongoing. But after the rapper's death, the case was closed, and they were made available under open records laws.
Pitchfork yesterday published "a secretly recorded tape of Onfroy talking with acquaintances around the time of his October 8, 2016 arrest" in which Onfroy bragged about abusing his ex-girlfriend and claimed he stabbed eight people. On it, he said, "I put my source of happiness in another person, which was a mistake initially, right? But she fell through on every occasion until now — until I started fucking her up, bruh. 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."
Onfroy went on to reference a stabbing that took place in Deerfield Beach: "I'm on [Miami] New Times for stabbing. How many people they put in the news? They said three. It was eight.”
