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At what point can we say someone is deserving of death? At what age do we say a person has used up all of their goodwill? We often hear talk of consequences for actions, but this discourse typically mistakes “consequences” for “punishment.”
A logical consequence of jumping in front of a speeding car is that you will be hit by it. Punishment for being a loudmouth at a baseball game is when someone hits you. This is not to say that XXXTentacion’s multiple alleged and confirmed acts of violence amounted to nothing more than being raucous at a sporting event.
If his ex-girlfriend Geneva Ayala is to be believed (and there’s little evidence saying she shouldn’t), the music star was vicious at times, choking, beating, and drowning a woman he claimed to love desperately. To put it shortly: there’s a reason why articles praising X’s music inevitably lead to articles discussing the ethics of these memorializing tendencies. The singer, born Jahseh Onfrey, was complicated. That cliché may be the only fitting term.
Fader’s new Hulu documentary, Look at Me: The Untold Story of XXXTENTACION, looks at Onfrey’s intrapersonal conflicts and contradictions without ever feeling like it is letting him off the hook for any of his actions.
Like many docs on those slain young, Look at Me takes viewers back to Onfrey’s childhood. This is where his seventeen-year-old mother and Rastafarian father gave him a name meaning “God said.” From here, we see Onfrey, known to close friends and family as Jah, grow up.
Even at an early age, Jah seems distant. He doesn’t smile much in childhood photos, though his mother is often beaming. This may be because he grew up in a home that had violence. His father beat his mother, and his mother fought back. She refused to call the police, because, where she grew up, they didn’t do that.
From there we learn of Onfrey’s father going to prison when Onfrey was ten.This perhaps led to him acting out in school. School psychologists diagnosed Onfrey with bipolar disorder, but his mother did not want him medicated. She preferred counseling and talk therapy. If this approach helped, we do not see it in the documentary.
The rest of the portion dedicated to his pre-music life depicts him angry, incarcerated, and in multiple fights. Where fourteen-year-old Onfrey made a turn, however, was when his mother rewarded him with studio time every week he didn’t skip school. It was this positive and reinforcing consequence that helped him hone his craft.
The story becomes what we’d expect from here as far as music bios go.
He begins accruing fame while touring with friend and fellow South Florida musician Ski Mask the Slump God. He begins viral video campaigns to bring views and streams to his SoundCloud account. He and his friends attempt to manipulate Instagram algorithms with multiple sockpuppet accounts to put more eyes on Onfrey.
We get scenes of him at pulse-pounding concerts leading the show. We get behind-the-scenes footage of him and a producer having a eureka moment when they stumble upon creating the hit single “SAD!”
All of this is fine. The scenes of Onfrey dancing around the stage, blurring the line between “rapper” and “rock star” is engrossing. It becomes quickly apparent how and why XXXTentacion’s shows were a can’t miss event for his fans. When the documentary becomes most interesting, however, is when it eschews X, the rapper/singer/songwriter, for Onfrey, the child and teenager struggling with bipolar disorder.
As I said earlier, the documentary is not a hagiography. It is not the legend of a martyr slain in the prime of his goodness and life. It is the story of a wildly troubled young man shot to death eight months before the birth of his child.
The documentary, directed and executive produced by Sabaah Folayan in addition to Onfrey’s mother Cleopatra Bernard, never excuses Onfrey of anything. But it does attempt to contextualize them. And maybe this is wrong.
Maybe, this is a more subtle attempt to garner sympathy for an alleged abuser. If to understand is to forgive, maybe this doc is a wholesale attempt to get us to understand Onfrey’s actions and therefore have us forgive them. This is certainly a possibility, but it doesn’t seem to be the case.
Instead, what we get is a person as complicated as any other person. More violent than most people, but still a person.
There’s an interesting moment late in the documentary where the interviewer presses Onfrey’s aunt Deandra Ellis about his supposed attempts at redemption. Ellis says Jah was trying to right his wrongs as they were concerned about the alleged beating of Geneva Ayala. The interviewer asks how is that possible if he never publicly admitted this wrongdoing? An admission that likely would’ve saved Ayala from online and in-person harassment.
Ellis does some mental gymnastics to explain that away, saying admitting it to himself and maybe Ayala would’ve been enough. A friend of Onfrey’s sitting in on the interview offers that maybe, admitting it in public would have cost Onfrey the legal case against him. This then begs the question: if we assume prison is a logical, growth-oriented consequence, can one truly be sorry if they’re unwilling to deal with the fallout of admitting guilt? Can one redeem himself of a wrong he refuses to, at least publicly, admit it exists?
Look at Me discusses these questions by way of only hinting at them. Onfrey’s family is involved, but so is Ayala. She has forgiven Onfrey, but the documentary never dictates that we should. In fact, it’s hard to watch sometimes.
Jahseh Onfrey could be a sadistic brute. But then, he could also be a loving older brother with genuine charm. Jahseh Onfrey could be manic and paranoid, but he channeled this into his X persona and became one of the world’s most-streamed artists, even after his death.
Maybe XXXTentacion, Jahseh Onfrey, or both, got exactly what they deserved. Maybe a life of violence, even when you begin taking ostensible baby steps to right these wrongs, will inevitably lead to a violent death. Maybe being shot in the throat three times while being robbed is exactly the punishment Jahseh Onfrey merited.
“Everybody will get a death that is deserving. Everybody will get a life that is deserving,” he says in the documentary. And if we all agree that his actions were often juvenile to the point of pathology, why would we ever cosign such a foolish statement? Jahseh Onfrey didn’t get the death he deserved. He simply got death. This documentary does a fantastic job of looking at his life.
Look at Me: The Untold Story of XXXTENTACION will be available to stream on Hulu Thursday, May 26, 2022.
At what point can we say someone is deserving of death? At what age do we say a person has used up all of their goodwill? We often hear talk of consequences for actions, but this discourse typically mistakes “consequences” for “punishment.”
A logical consequence of jumping in front of a speeding car is that you will be hit by it. Punishment for being a loudmouth at a baseball game is when someone hits you. This is not to say that XXXTentacion’s multiple alleged and confirmed acts of violence amounted to nothing more than being raucous at a sporting event.
If his ex-girlfriend Geneva Ayala is to be believed (and there’s little evidence saying she shouldn’t), the music star was vicious at times, choking, beating, and drowning a woman he claimed to love desperately. To put it shortly: there’s a reason why articles praising X’s music inevitably lead to articles discussing the ethics of these memorializing tendencies. The singer, born Jahseh Onfrey, was complicated. That cliché may be the only fitting term.
Fader’s new Hulu documentary, Look at Me: The Untold Story of XXXTENTACION, looks at Onfrey’s intrapersonal conflicts and contradictions without ever feeling like it is letting him off the hook for any of his actions.
Like many docs on those slain young, Look at Me takes viewers back to Onfrey’s childhood. This is where his seventeen-year-old mother and Rastafarian father gave him a name meaning “God said.” From here, we see Onfrey, known to close friends and family as Jah, grow up.
Even at an early age, Jah seems distant. He doesn’t smile much in childhood photos, though his mother is often beaming. This may be because he grew up in a home that had violence. His father beat his mother, and his mother fought back. She refused to call the police, because, where she grew up, they didn’t do that.
From there we learn of Onfrey’s father going to prison when Onfrey was ten.This perhaps led to him acting out in school. School psychologists diagnosed Onfrey with bipolar disorder, but his mother did not want him medicated. She preferred counseling and talk therapy. If this approach helped, we do not see it in the documentary.
The rest of the portion dedicated to his pre-music life depicts him angry, incarcerated, and in multiple fights. Where fourteen-year-old Onfrey made a turn, however, was when his mother rewarded him with studio time every week he didn’t skip school. It was this positive and reinforcing consequence that helped him hone his craft.
The story becomes what we’d expect from here as far as music bios go.
He begins accruing fame while touring with friend and fellow South Florida musician Ski Mask the Slump God. He begins viral video campaigns to bring views and streams to his SoundCloud account. He and his friends attempt to manipulate Instagram algorithms with multiple sockpuppet accounts to put more eyes on Onfrey.
We get scenes of him at pulse-pounding concerts leading the show. We get behind-the-scenes footage of him and a producer having a eureka moment when they stumble upon creating the hit single “SAD!”
All of this is fine. The scenes of Onfrey dancing around the stage, blurring the line between “rapper” and “rock star” is engrossing. It becomes quickly apparent how and why XXXTentacion’s shows were a can’t miss event for his fans. When the documentary becomes most interesting, however, is when it eschews X, the rapper/singer/songwriter, for Onfrey, the child and teenager struggling with bipolar disorder.
As I said earlier, the documentary is not a hagiography. It is not the legend of a martyr slain in the prime of his goodness and life. It is the story of a wildly troubled young man shot to death eight months before the birth of his child.
The documentary, directed and executive produced by Sabaah Folayan in addition to Onfrey’s mother Cleopatra Bernard, never excuses Onfrey of anything. But it does attempt to contextualize them. And maybe this is wrong.
Maybe, this is a more subtle attempt to garner sympathy for an alleged abuser. If to understand is to forgive, maybe this doc is a wholesale attempt to get us to understand Onfrey’s actions and therefore have us forgive them. This is certainly a possibility, but it doesn’t seem to be the case.
Instead, what we get is a person as complicated as any other person. More violent than most people, but still a person.
There’s an interesting moment late in the documentary where the interviewer presses Onfrey’s aunt Deandra Ellis about his supposed attempts at redemption. Ellis says Jah was trying to right his wrongs as they were concerned about the alleged beating of Geneva Ayala. The interviewer asks how is that possible if he never publicly admitted this wrongdoing? An admission that likely would’ve saved Ayala from online and in-person harassment.
Ellis does some mental gymnastics to explain that away, saying admitting it to himself and maybe Ayala would’ve been enough. A friend of Onfrey’s sitting in on the interview offers that maybe, admitting it in public would have cost Onfrey the legal case against him. This then begs the question: if we assume prison is a logical, growth-oriented consequence, can one truly be sorry if they’re unwilling to deal with the fallout of admitting guilt? Can one redeem himself of a wrong he refuses to, at least publicly, admit it exists?
Look at Me discusses these questions by way of only hinting at them. Onfrey’s family is involved, but so is Ayala. She has forgiven Onfrey, but the documentary never dictates that we should. In fact, it’s hard to watch sometimes.
Jahseh Onfrey could be a sadistic brute. But then, he could also be a loving older brother with genuine charm. Jahseh Onfrey could be manic and paranoid, but he channeled this into his X persona and became one of the world’s most-streamed artists, even after his death.
Maybe XXXTentacion, Jahseh Onfrey, or both, got exactly what they deserved. Maybe a life of violence, even when you begin taking ostensible baby steps to right these wrongs, will inevitably lead to a violent death. Maybe being shot in the throat three times while being robbed is exactly the punishment Jahseh Onfrey merited.
“Everybody will get a death that is deserving. Everybody will get a life that is deserving,” he says in the documentary. And if we all agree that his actions were often juvenile to the point of pathology, why would we ever cosign such a foolish statement? Jahseh Onfrey didn’t get the death he deserved. He simply got death. This documentary does a fantastic job of looking at his life.
Look at Me: The Untold Story of XXXTENTACION will be available to stream on Hulu Thursday, May 26, 2022.
As children, we often see our mothers as one-dimensional. It is sometimes hard to separate them being our parents from their realities as women. Fresh off the heels of Mother’s Day, DeVon Franklin’s new tribute to the Black women in his life may inspire you to look at yours with a fresh perspective.
BGN spoke with Franklin via video chat to discuss why he developed It Takes a Woman, Kingdom Business, and created content that uplifts the human spirit.
What is It Takes a Woman about?
This book is one of the most personal, open, honest, transparent books I’ve done. It’s all about how it takes a woman for us to be who we are as men — for us to be where we are as families and as a community. We would be nowhere if it was not for the women in our lives.
With this audiobook that I’m doing through Audible, I wanted to tell how the tragedy of my father was a catalyst for my mother to bring in help from my great aunts to really surround me and my brothers to make sure that we didn’t become a statistic.
We tell our family story. We tell how this tragedy brought everybody together. Then you get more insight on [each aunt’s] and my mom’s story. I really wanted to do this project to celebrate women, honor women, and preserve the voices and the impact women had in our culture and community.
What inspired you to share this story now?
It was from a series of events. Audible had approached me about doing this book, and when they mentioned it, I said, “Yeah, you know, I’d love to tell that story.” I went to my mom and my great aunts that are still alive and asked, “Would you be open to participating in this book?” They were like, “Yeah, well, if you pay us, we’ll do whatever you want.” [Laughs].
So I said, “All right. Let me close the deal with you; you know, put a little something in your pocket.” I did, and they were just so honored to be able to participate and tell their stories. I love it, and I’m just so grateful and excited for people to hear it and grateful for the opportunity to have been able to do it.
You call those ladies your “village of love.” What is the most valuable lesson you’ve learned from them?
There are so many lessons, which is why I did this book; so that everyone can hear the lessons for themselves. One of the lessons that always has stuck with me that Aunt Donna says is you have to live it to learn it.
So often, you can intellectually think about something or approach it theologically but ultimately there are certain things in this thing called life you’re not going to learn until you live it. I didn’t understand what she meant until I started living life, and I said, “Oh, now I understand you gotta live it to learn it.” That has stuck with me from the day that she mentioned that to this very day.
What new truths did you discover about yourself or your village through this process?
I’ve spent countless hours with [my mom and aunts], yet I don’t think I’ve ever stopped to ask them more about their story, their experience in life, and how they felt about it. Through producing this Audible book, It Takes A Woman, I could hear their stories, ask them questions I never asked before, and hear things that they experienced I didn’t know.
That was really powerful for me to be the recipient of not just the wisdom but the pain and the transparency and the experience they have had. That was really a new revelation for me that there was much more to that they had to offer that I may have never known had I not had the opportunity to do this.
You have a new scripted series coming to BET+. Tell us about Kingdom Business.
Kingdom Business is a new TV series that I am the executive producer of for BET and BET+, producing it alongside the great Kirk Franklin and Dr. Holly Carter. It comes out on BET+ on May 19, 2022. It’s like Empire but set in the world of gospel music, so y’all better watch out!
It leaves no stone unturned in terms of drama. Yolanda Adams stars in it, and let me tell you something; y’all think you know Yolanda. You don’t. The character she plays is Donita Jordan, and Cookie Lyons has nothing on Donita Jordan. We have Serayah in it who’s an amazing rising star.
We have Chaundre, who’s a new actor on the scene. We have Michael Beach and Michael Jai White. La’Myia Good. We have a phenomenal cast. Kirk also plays a role. We have so many people in this series, and I cannot wait for people to see this. It’s eight one-hour episodes all on BET+; you can binge to your heart’s content. I guarantee you will want a season two.
You have the book available on Audible, a television series on BET+, and your latest book, Live Free, was just released in paperback. What’s next?
Movies, TV appearances, and new books. I got a lot coming and as long as I have the opportunity to create and the outlets that allow me to get that creation to the world, I’m gonna keep creating. I’m gonna keep trying to do everything I can to uplift the human spirit. That’s what it’s all about. We are in some difficult times, and I’m crazy enough to believe that content can change lives. I feel the responsibility of being in this position and trying to do something positive with it.
It Takes a Woman is currently available on Audible and Kingdom Business will be available to stream from BET+ on, May 19, 2022.
Today it has been reported via Variety that the CW series Naomi has been canceled.
The CW upfronts are this week and this news came following the cancellations of other CW shows such as Batwoman and Legends of Tomorrow.
This past week BGN recently spoke with actor Kaci Walfall, who plays the titular character Naomi about the season finale. You can hear the full episode of the podcast below:
Kaci Walfall is an actor, known for Person of Interest (2011), The Equalizer (2021) and Naomi (2022). Walfall made her Broadway debut at age 9 as Young Nala in The Lion King, and at age 11 she originated the role of Lavender in the First National Tour of ‘Matilda’.
Naomi started as a comic book series created by David F. Walker and Brian Michael Bendis with artwork created by Jamal Campbell. In the TV adaptation, Naomi is a cool, confident, comic book-loving teenager who pursues her hidden destiny. When a supernatural event shakes her small hometown of Port Oswego, Naomi sets out to uncover its origins, with a little help from her fiercely loyal best friend Annabelle.
Currently, fans are lobbying to have the recently canceled Batwoman be picked up by HBO Max using the hashtag #HBOMaxSaveBatwoman. Billboards are being posted in New York City to show their diligent determination to keep Ryan Wilder — the first Black female LGBTQ superhero in her own solo series on screen.
— ?ɐᗰ๓ (@sprnklzR4wnnrs) May 12, 2022
ANOTHER ONE@JaviciaLeslie @meagantandy @RachieSkarsten @CamrusJ @NicoleKang #SaveBatwoman #HBOMaxSaveBatwoman
40th St & 8th Ave NW Corner NY
booking: @thevaporz1
art: @italymystery
setup: @ByJadeHendrix: @sushita
thankful for all of you
pic.twitter.com/LqGXJfw2ST
— The Vaporz
It looks like Gotham in NYC today!! Thanks to everyone who’s made a contribution so far for the billboards. We’re just getting started! #SaveBatwoman #HBOMaxSaveBatwoman @hbomax @warnerbrostv @Caseybloys @BatwomanWriters @JaviciaLeslie pic.twitter.com/cm9PWILZOy
(@thevaporz1) May 6, 2022
No other details have been shared as of yet about the fate of either show at this time.