Tidal: Keeping illegal torrents alive since 2014

Look, I’ve made snarky comments about him in the past for his godawful treatment of women and gay people. I was pissed that he was popular because, honestly, there are so many awful people who are popular and I hate what that says about our society. I didn’t want him to be able to have a big platform to excuse abuse and hatred. I absolutely did NOT want his story to end this way. For goodness’ sake, he was 20. I wanted him to live, grow up, become better. Everyone deserves that chance. He had a whole life ahead of him. This is just sad. I won’t mourn him like I would an artist who had an impact on my life or a person I thought did a lot of good. Instead I’ll mourn that a very troubled, troubling person met an awful end. I hope that, if there is another life, he finds peace there he didn’t find in this one.

Im sorry you have to hear this story, and I want to warn folks in advance not to read this if you want to preserve any semblance of your faith in humanity.

I had a student named Jessica in Baltimore City when I taught at the Southside Academy of Environmental Science. If you lived in Baltimore, you’d know that it was just Cherry Hill High school renamed because Cherry Hill was such a hell on earth. My best stufdent was named Jessica, a young woman who would beg to read every morning from a book called “The Color of Water.” She’d read a little everyday and since I hadn’t encountered the book before my time at the school, she effectively read the book to me.

She started showing up to school with bruises because her mom would get high and throw her down a flight of stairs every day. Of course I called social services. They removed her from the house and placed her with her father.

She became more withdrawn after that, and I asked the city to place her with a social worker. Gradually I came to realize she was pregnant. She had a boyfriend in school named Charlie who everyone called Chucky because he thought Charlie sounded too white, and he was small and intermittently violent, so the kids started calling him Chucky as a joke and it caught on.

Chucky’s Dad was in jail, but was a real well-known gang member in the neighborhood. He had attained a sort of mythical standing in Cherry Hill, mostly due to the fact that he made It to his late 30’s in a place where a majority of young men were long gone by 25.

I assumed that Chucky was the father of Jessica’s baby. He was always really kind and gentle with her, and would give her money he made selling heroin to suburban junkies. The social worker insisted on holding the money and it finally came to light that she was keeping it for herself (she claimed for Jessica’s future. She was relocated.

They brought in a new case worker, who told me that we were no longer to talk about Jessica’s baby. We were ordered never to refer to the baby as a he or she. And that if it came up, we were to redirect the conversation. One day Jessica jumped on the table at school and just started screaming. It was terrible. We had to get her off the desk, and, when we finally did, I asked the social worker what was up. She told me that the information was private, but just know it was bad.

Some time before this incident occurred, Jessica was removed from her father’s custody. A little while after that he turned up dead, shot in the head near the “Vietnam Veterans Memorial Bridge”. His body was fished out of the Patapsco River.

Her mother had not been heard from for some time and eventually we came to find out she succumbed to a drug overdose. Jessica started reading in class again.

One day I’m early to school and I see Chucky. He’s actually smoking weed on the front steps of the school. I told him to put it out, and he took two more pulls and didn’t even ask if he was in trouble.

I told him that I thought it was great he came to school everyday, and something about how I hoped Jessica and his baby would have a chance if he worked hard and moved on to a decent job. He kinda put his head down and said,

“Not my baby V (V being the first initial of my last name the kids could not begin to pronounce. He told me when Jessica was moved to her father’s house she was forced by him to prostitute herself for money. That he hadn’t even had sex with her before she was pregnant. He told me the case worker was so adamant about not saying the gender of the baby because they didn’t want Jessica to have any emotional attachment to “it” being that at her young age, and deep psychological trauma was unfit to take care of it. The worst part about it was that there was an outside chance her father was the father of the child, and no one even knew what was going to happen in that case.

Jessica’s attendance dropped dramatically as she neared full term. I would get pissed at Chucky because he was on to another girl, but what business did I have telling him what to do.

Then one day Jessica just stopped going to school. Chucky stuck around maybe a week after she left, and I never saw either of them again.

I’ve lived for a long time now understanding that my original call to the social worker put Jessica in that position. As many people who have told me it wasn’t my fault and “what was I supposed to do?” I’ve agonized about this my whole life.

I’m not sorry the monsters Jessica called parents are dead. I’m so sorry about so many other things.

Just a tragic life and story, through and through. There are so many contradictory and yet valid ways to process this shooting as well as his life and music and crimes. Remember, it’s always ok to not have a take on something like this.

From all accounts he was a bad person, but the circumstances of his upbringing did him no favors and that doesn’t make this a happy ending. Something pretty sad about a young person of color struggling with inherent poverty and violence coming from a suburb called “Plantation.” We need to do more in this country to systematically improve factors that contribute to lives (and deaths) like this one.

I like the original title better: EVERYTHING IS FINE OUR MARRIAGE IS FINE TOTALLY FINE WHY DO YOU ASK.

Finally made a playlist for you guys

It’s mid-June and “Torrent The Shit out of This New Tidal Exclusive Content” season is finally here

I’ve seen a ton of genres come and go. But I’m not sure if one is as toxic as the Soundcloud rappers. It’s just fucking sad a kid this young was such a piece of shit and now he’s died a piece of shit. It’s a waste of a life.

HOW WILL THE COMMENTERS OF STEREOGUM REACT?? HE WAS OBJECTIVELY A BAD PERSON BUT TO SPEAK DISRESPECTFULLY OF THE DEAD IS A FAUX PAS IN TODAYS SOCIETY. WHO WILL GET THE MOST UPVOTES AND HOW? STAY TUNED TO THIS SPACE TO FIND OUT!!!

I would consider you a genuinely bad person and a jerk to boot.

RIP X,
https://www.redbubble.com/people/chugcore/works/32297641-rest-in-peace-xxxtentacion-t-shirt?asc=u&p=t-shirt

XXXTentacioff

That was super deep! Nvm, no one is culpable for their behavior, and patterns don’t exist. Also, anyone could’ve been killed today. It just so happens to have been an incredibly violent hip hop star. But nothing to see here!

What are the changes that this murder will finally be the straw that breaks the camels back, and gives the black community a small shred of self reflection? That not all of their problems are inflicted by the system (I.e., straight white men), but are rather largely created by the culture that they continue to perpetuate? But free Meek doe, rite?

This about Grimes?