In this op-ed, Najma Sharif explains why we shouldn't mythologize artists who are alleged abusers after their death.

My neighborhood coffee shop was quietly playing “Sad!” by XXXTentacion as I sat down to write this. In this track’s lyrics, the rapper deploys a known technique of abusers — threatening self harm should his partner leave him. XXXTentacion, born Jahseh Onfroy, was fatally shot in his hometown of Deerfield Beach, Florida, on June 18. In light of this news, it was jarring to hear his voice. I asked the barista I see most mornings what she thought about XXXTentacion, but she said she didn’t really think of him. She said she liked the music and didn’t pay attention to anything else. But there's a lot else to consider. After his death, the Internet was split into three camps: fans who mourned, “objective” critics, and those who felt worse for the woman he allegedly abused than they did that he died.

In 2016, Onfroy was charged with aggravated battery of a pregnant woman, domestic battery by strangulation, false imprisonment, and witness-tampering, according to the official charges obtained by Pitchfork. In a deposition related to these charges, Pitchfork reported the alleged victim detailed graphic instances of abuse, claiming Onfroy hit her, threatened to kill her numerous times, and threatened to sexually assault her with a barbecue fork. In a separate instance, Onfroy spoke about a time he said he brutally beat a gay man.

Many on social media brought up these allegations against Onfroy after he died, but were immediately met with those who countered them, claiming they were speaking ill of the dead. Soon, focus shifted off his alleged abuse, and instead, his potential was cited multiple times: what if he had the chance to change? The impossibility of knowing whether or not he would’ve changed wasn’t interrogated, but the belief in his ability to change was strong regardless. Conversations surrounding Onfroy’s death highlighted that, when someone dies, often the bad parts about them die too. They become deified and saintly, especially if they die young.

I was one of the people who felt indifferent about Onfroy’s death, and XXXTentacion’s fans attacked us for that. His fans claimed that the allegations against him were false. The passion and empathy extended to him may have been because of how unpredictable his death was, but violence breeds violence.

There was a hope people held out for him that he might change. Perhaps he would have. We'll never know. But though some tried to hold him accountable for his actions in his lifetime, heavyweights in rap seemed to support him when Spotify removed his music from playlists, but not from the service. After his death, other artists mourned the potential lost. But, does every abusive person have the potential to become Malcolm X? Historically, artists that have died young have been hailed as thought leaders — revolutionaries even — their transgressions wiped from the slate of collective memory. In death, Tupac was a lyrical genius; he is remembered as handsome and charismatic. But T.D. Williams pointed out in The Root that “he drew from the same misogynistic, violent and materialistic well as all the rest.” In 1995, Tupac was sentenced to prison for sexually abusing a fan. Like Tupac, Lawrence Burney argued forNoisey, Onfroy will be canonized because of his early death: “That’s what makes his death a tragedy, not just for how his life ended, but for how that selective and curated narrative has taken hold of impressionable minds.”

And just as we often forget the grim realities of our heroes's lives, victims of domestic and sexual abuse are also all too often unnoticed. The National Coalition Against Domestic violence reports that, on average, nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States. If were were to try and report all of the cases of domestic abuse in this country, by the time we were to start, another one has already taken place. Black women are disproportionately impacted by domestic abuse.