XXXTentacion's Prison Phone Calls Released, Reference Bashing and Threats of Violence

In a series of revealing reports, Pitchfork has been consistently chipping away at the potential martyr status for slain rapper XXXTentacion, whose music is still pedestalized among his fans despite serious allegations made against him before his murder. Following the outlet’s October publication of details from an audio recording of rapper XXXTentacion confessing to domestic abuse, Pitchfork has printed quotes from a series of phone calls he made while in jail in 2016, the result of the Miami-Dade County state attorney’s office entering about 200 of these calls into evidence. Pitchfork has obtained 59 of them, which amounts to more than 16 hours of audio, most of which the outlet says was recorded over the course of two days (October 25 to October 27, 2016).

While the details of the reporting are sometimes virtually lurid, there are some telling nuggets in Pitchfork’s write-up. Pitchfork reports a series of conversations and events regarding a seeming reference to abusing his ex Geneva Ayala, from which he immediately backpedaled on the phone (he was made aware at the start of every call that he was being recorded):

One especially fraught conversation about XXXTentacion’s ex-girlfriend took place on the afternoon of October 26, when he told a woman, “I already got what I wanted, I already bashed her face—her face on the internet, bruh, I done made her look bad on the internet, bruh.” Later that day, an audio clip from the call was posted on Instagram of XXXTentacion saying he “bashed her face” without the hurried clarification. During a subsequent call that afternoon, a woman told XXXTentacion about the Instagram post. “She’s so stupid because now I’m about to go all out on her,” he said. “I got something for this bitch-ass. She should have never done this. I got a video, bruh.” He then asked a man to send him a specific humiliating video of his ex-girlfriend. (The description matches a video that was posted to YouTube days later.) “Bruh, that’s what I liked about her,” XXXTentacion told a woman later that night, giggling over a different story about degrading his ex-girlfriend. “She would just do anything I said.”

In the same conversation as the “bashed her face” comment, he told the woman on the line, “I’m not threatening you”; he then went on to point out, “You do not have a restraining order on me or the many people that I know,” adding, “Just keep my name out ya mouth, or I’ma make sure you go to jail for a very, very, very long fucking time, and I’ma make sure that all that money you got go to shit.” When their tense discussion ended, he said, “Somebody need to beat [her] up.” Reflecting on their exchange, he added, “I loved every second of that because you could hear the fear.”

Elsewhere he denied he had held Ayala hostage, as alleged (“How did I keep you hostage if you managed to leave, you fucking bitch, bruh?”), and that she was ever pregnant. In a conversation with an unidentified woman, he apparently commented on the abuse allegations, for which he had been arrested earlier that month: “Even if I did some shit like that, to you or anyone around you, bruh, I know you wouldn’t go put me in fucking jail.”

In another call, he threatened violence, sexual and otherwise, against a 16-year-old that he thought had breached the security of his phone and Soundcloud accounts:

As the Miami New Times was first to report, XXXTentacion ordered his friends to beat up a 16-year-old acquaintance who he suspected of allowing others to use XXXTentacion’s cellphone and repost songs on the rapper’s SoundCloud. XXXTentacion told his friends that the boy “needs to get his face fucked up,” and that, “If I get out I’ma catch another charge fucking him up, bruh.” The boy was evidently put on the phone, and XXXTentacion told him, “Shut the fuck up before I make them slap you and make you suck a dick on camera.” Afterward, he added, “Beat that boy ass. I’ma call back. I want that man ass beat.”

The calls also contain references to Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton (“Hillary wants to make abortion illegal, she wants to take away our guns”), and DJ Khaled. Pitchfork reports that he “cajoled” multiple woman he spoke to, “insisted that they missed him, reminded them of their shared sexual experiences together, teased them by calling them fat or ugly, and told a couple of them he loved them.” Regarding these interactions, he told a woman believed to be his mother, “I’m just playing with all these little girls’ hearts.”

There’s much more at Pitchfork to help shade in the image of this person whose career took off after his death by a legion of mostly young people content to overlook, ignore, or flat out not care about the hideous abuse he was accused of, despite it already having been thoroughly reported.