Comedian Dina Hashem faced backlash after making jokes about rapper XXXTentacion’s death during an appearance on the Comedy Central show “This Week at the Comedy Cellar.”
“Is anyone still mourning XXXTentacion? He’s a rapper who was murdered,” Hashem says in the bit, which was originally tweeted out by Comedy Central. “He’s dead now. ... He was on his way to buy a car with $50,000 in cash and somebody shot him and took the money. Which is very tragic, but I also think it would be a very good Venmo commercial. That’s the first thing I thought when I heard that. Like, ‘I don’t have Venmo, I should get Venmo.’”
XXXTentacion, whose real name was Jahseh Dwayne Ricardo Onfroy, was fatally shot in Florida last year.
The 20-year-old was facing numerous criminal charges from a 2016 domestic violence case involving his pregnant ex-girlfriend, including aggravated assault, domestic battery by strangulation, false imprisonment, and witness tampering.
Fans of the late rapper were outraged over Hashem’s joke and quickly swarmed her Instagram page with clown emojis. Her Twitter is now private and her Facebook account is temporarily unavailable. Hashem later apologized for the joke on Instagram and said it was cut from the televised program.
“I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone’s feelings, that’s never what I want,” she said in the post. “I’m a comic and use jokes to try and make dark topics less painful but I realize not everyone feels that way, and I don’t want anyone to feel badly. It was taken down and won’t air on TV.”
Many comedians came to Hashem’s defense and called out XXXTentacion’s fans for attacking the comedian and defending an alleged violent abuser.
“Attacking a woman is the best tribute to XXXTentacion his fans could have come up with,” comedian Django Gold wrote on Twitter.
“Look this XXXTentacion shit is actually very simple so lemme sum it up for you: YES you can rap about murder but NO you can’t joke about murder but also YES you can beat the shit outta women but NO women can’t tell jokes about said abuser what part of this do you not understand?” comedian Curtis Cook tweeted.
“All these rappers say they’re ready to take a bullet but they can’t even take a joke,” Cook added.