June marked the passing of famous Florida artist Jahseh Onfroy, creatively known as XXXTENTACION. Though facing a decent amount of scrutiny during his lifetime for a number of reasons, there is no reason for X’s death to be viewed as anything other than a tragedy, let alone the loss of a musical genius.

Through different social media platforms, people have taken to their keyboards to blatantly disrespect X’s life and even celebrate his death in some cases simply because of his troubled past with the law and accusations that have not been proven.

Those who never listened to his artistry while X was alive and basically allowed the media and unproven allegations to shape their viewpoint toward him are ignorant and allow mindless fallacies to create their morals.

Not only did X strive to help his community in south Florida (including a charity event that was set to take place the weekend of his death), but he also made major efforts to help fellow artists and public figures through advice on how to create a positive light on themselves for the public, including those who faced criticism similar to his own.

Obviously, it shouldn’t be acceptable to condone any legal trouble, such as acts of violence and domestic abuse, but by that same standard death should not be celebrated. If people want to trust the media to understand the life of Jahseh and have a level of dislike for the way he lived, they can simply keep those views to themselves as opposed to expressing statements of hatred and malice through the likes of Twitter and Instagram.

Allow a soul who has inspired a vast number of lives to rest and allow his family and those who did enjoy his life to continue to do so.

That being said, the day a er his death, X’s music sales went up 1,603 percent and his single “Sad!” racked up 10.4 million streams in one day, breaking Taylor Swift’s previous record of 10.1 million. This should not come as a surprise, because, whether people like it or not,

X was a more versatile artist than many other top-tier artists, including Swift and other respected artists like Kendrick Lamar.

He was not only a rapper, as he produced a number of pop and rock songs as well. Shortly a er his passing, X’s management team put out the music video for “Sad!” which gained more than 80 million views on YouTube. The video shows X fighting his former self by personifying his troubled past.

Just as the world watched an inspirational artist strive to make a complete turn-around while
on the rising path to his musical prime, we were stripped of an artistic genius and left with a mystery of just what he could have become.

We can now only make assumptions regarding what X’s musical power truly could have been, but it is definitely time to allow him to rest in peace.