On March 18, Jahseh Onfroy, aka XXXTentacion, was in Pompano Beach, Fla., performing for 1,500 fans at a benefit he had organized for the victims of the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Fla. The show raised $30,000, which he personally donated to 15-year-old Parkland victim Anthony Borges, who was shot five times while shielding 20 classmates with his body during the shooting. At one point during the show, Onfroy, 20, paused to address the crowd, saying with his trademark cutting honesty, “I was not a good person, but I’ve been trying my best to change myself.”
A week later, Onfroy’s second studio album, ?, debuted at No.1 on the Billboard 200 with 131,000 equivalent album units, according to Nielsen Music, a higher first-week total than early-2018 releases by Camila Cabello, Fall Out Boy and Logic. With 159.4 million on-demand audio streams of the album's songs in its first week, ? logged the second-highest streams for any album released this year so far, behind only Migos' Culture II in January. The album’s “Sad!” jumped 19-7 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming his first top 10 single and the highest of seven songs he has on the chart this week.
The celebration didn’t last. On March 27, an undated video surfaced online that appeared to show Onfroy punching a girl in the head. His attorney, Jaclyn Broudy, tells Billboard the clip is “aged and staged” and that Onfroy and the girl were “having fun and joking around.” (On Instagram, the girl refuted that characterization.) The video’s release is “nothing but an attempt to tarnish his name and hurt his career,” she adds. “That’s the cost of fame.”