Fame can come in many ways in the modern music industry. Many artists find success on social media, whether that be from viral dance trends, popular memes, or even just because of their own personal social media presence. However, artists sometimes rise to fame simply because of media attention or controversy, for example, the singer D4vd’s album Petal’s to Thorns has recently re-entered the top 200 in light of his recent controversy, simply because viewers were interested in his music after hearing about the news surrounding him. This event shows us what happens when an artist is suspected of having done something terrible, but what happens when something terrible happens to the artist?
On May 5th, 2025, indie rock artist “Wifiskeleton” died due to a drug overdose at the age of 21. His song “nope your too late I already died” had recently gone viral on social media following a popular parody of the song featuring impressions of adult animation characters like Peter Griffin and Homer Simpson. Following his death, Wifiskeleton as a search term grew in popularity 100 times his previous search popularity, and “nope your too late i already died” entered the Hot 100. Wifiskeleton’s death is not only tragic, but also gives us a great insight into how the public reacts to an artist’s death. Wifiskeleton’s search popularity is now resting at 7 times the popularity from before his death, but looking even further into Google Trends is even more revealing. Although it may seem like many people began listening to his music and became fans after the heightened awareness that comes with a tragedy such as this, that does not seem to be the case. Related artists and frequent collaborators, such as “Jaydes,” experienced a sudden decline in popularity immediately following the news, but have since regained their original popularity in the following months. Wifiskeleton’s death is a case study on the effect of death on an artist’s popularity, and I intend to discover why.
Sad Music
On September 5th, 2024, rapper “Rich Homie Quan” died of a suspected overdose at the age of 34; however, the aftermath of his death did not follow the same path as Wifiskeleton. Despite his obvious edge in popularity over Wifiskeleton’s, he retained almost none of the surge in popularity that Wifiskeleton did. His name shot up in popularity like Wifiskeleton’s did, but he remains at the same popularity he started at, excluding September 5th, 2025. Another difference between the two events is that Rich Homie Quan’s collaborators grew with him, unlike Wifiskeleton. Young Thug, the frequent collaborator of Rich Homie Quan, quadrupled in search popularity on the day of Rich Homie Quan’s death; however, neither of them retained that surge over time. I believe the difference between these two tragedies is the type of music that they made. Wifiskeleton made very sad music that relates to the sadness of the situation, and more importantly, his most popular songs were very sad. Rich Homie Quan made dark-sounding music, too, but most of his popular songs were not as immediately relatable to the tragedy as Wifiskeleton’s were. I think that new listeners who were introduced to these two artists because of their deaths were much less likely to latch onto songs that they couldn’t immediately relate to the situation, and this is far from the only example of this.
Juice WRLD, XXXTENTACION, and Pop Smoke
Juice WRLD, XXXTENTACION, and Pop Smoke are 3 different young rappers who died in the same span of 3 years from 2018 to 2020, and are often grouped because of their similar circumstances. These deaths are possibly the most representative of artists who die during the peak of their careers, and the differences between their aftermaths are startling. Juice WRLD and XXXTENTACION, while not being frequent collaborators, were two of the main popularizers of emo rap, while Pop Smoke was a New York Drill rapper. They were all relatively popular before their deaths, having their own respective cult following, but not much more than that; however, when they died, they all gained the majority of their current following. Similar to Wifiskeleton, all 3 of them grew their following after their deaths, but this happened to a much greater degree for all 3 of these artists. Each of them had blow-up hit songs on social media following their deaths, and each of them gained a strong fanbase that they didn’t have at all when they died. However, the sad music trend continued in these rappers, since the two emo rappers, Juice WRLD and XXXTENTACION, have maintained their popularity to this day, but Pop Smoke really only retains streams through his hit songs. I think the reason all of these artists had a huge surge in popularity is because of the popularity they had before they died. They were all at the point in their careers where they had just recently gained popularity, and older listeners had a sort of superiority in being “OG fans”. I think that post-death, older fans bragged about being fans before everyone knew about them because they had died, and newer listeners who were drawn in by their sad music pretended to be older fans to fit in and became lifelong fans in the process.
Exploitation and Conclusions
The reason all of this is significant is that death is a tragedy, especially in such young and talented artists. Dead artists are possibly the EASIEST situation for greedy people connected to the late artists. Artists like Juice WRLD are STILL releasing music in 2025, despite being dead for years; the late artist’s friends CONTINUE to lead on desperate fans with unreleased music and CONTINUE to profit off of his death. This is disrespectful to the artist’s friends, family, and to the music industry in general. Tragedy should not be a means of making money, and I don’t believe that anyone should make a living off of someone unable to do anything about it.
