XxxTentacion’s 17 goes platinum
The 2017 album by late rapper XxxTentacion, 17, has been certified platinum for sales of over 300,000 units in the United Kingdom.
The certification was announced on June 10 by the British Phonographic Industry.
Jamaican music producer John “Jon FX” Crawford was the mix engineer for 17. He remembers first meeting XxxTentacion in 2012.
“I met him at Trainline Records, owned by Gilbert ‘Gilly’ Walters, another Jamaican producer based in South Florida. We began working together in 2016 when he teamed with Sizzla on the song, I’m Yours. He was really a misunderstood kid. People had this image of him as a bad boy but he was really nothing like that… he loved to skateboard and play paintball,” Crawford recalled. “He came from a really good family but got into hip hop, which can be rough.”
The diminutive artiste’s life ended tragically on June 18, 2018 when he was murdered at an auto dealership in Deerfield Beach, Florida. Broward County police report that he was shot by one of two men while sitting in a black BMW. XxxTentacion was pronounced dead at hospital.
XxxTentacion, whose real name was Jahseh Onfroy, was born in Plantation, South Florida to Jamaican parents. He spent time around Jamaican music producers from his early teens and collaborated with reggae/dancehall acts, including Sizzla and Vybz Kartel.
The album 17 features the Billboard singles Jocelyn Flores, F..k Love, Revenge and Everybody Dies in Their Nightmares. It was certified double-platinum in the United States, New Zealand and Denmark.
On its release in 2018, 17 opened at number 11 in the United Kingdom and number two on the Billboard 200 and Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts.
