Chynna Rogers was a drug addict plagued by demons that haunted her till the tragic end
As the rap community mourns the loss of yet another talented young artist — 25-year-old Chynna Rogers — there is another conversation brewing on the sidelines. How many more sparks of greatness must extinguish way ahead of their time before we finally acknowledge the drug culture that robs us of them?
Chynna's cause of death remains unknown, but for many, it's easy to guess what took her from us. One of her close friends, Quibi Brunson, tweeted, "Just lost another friend to drugs. I'm not going to be quiet about it. I'm tired of drug culture. Everything about it. Everything attached to it. I know there's a bigger picture. But i don’t care right now. I’m so tired. And sad… Crying. I am so mad." With this, many fans have already begun speculating what may have caused her sudden death.
But as people theorize and comment from the comfort of their homes, it is important to acknowledge Chynna's talent as well as her struggles.
When she was 14, Chynna was discovered at an amusement park and soon inked a deal with Ford Models. She was then hired as an intern by the founder of the hip-hop collective A$AP Mob, Steven 'A$AP Yams' Rodriguez while she was still in high school. Rodriguez himself died in 2015 at the age of 26. His death was ruled to be due to a drug overdose, but A$AP Mob members, including A$AP Rocky claimed he died from choking on his own vomit as a result of sleep apnea.
Chynna's association with A$AP Mob soon turned into deep friendship. As the Mob continued to grow into one of the most influential collectives in the rap scene, Chynna found the inspiration and encouragement she needed to try rapping herself.
Her earliest hits included 2013's 'Selfie' and 2014’s 'Glen Coco'. In addition to being well-versed with Philadelphia's hip-hop scene, Chynna also found inspiration in everything — from pop-culture high-school flicks like 'Mean Girls' to psychedelic rock.
So it was no surprise that her 2018 EP 'I'm Not Here. This Isn’t Happening' featured a wide range of genres and styles. What did stand out, however, were the lyrics that recounted Chynna's harrowing experiences with drugs and violence. The closing song of the EP 'Flatline', in particular, described how she grew up "smoking medicinal / selling oregano, call that bru cannabis". While her previous EP 'Chinois' was more cheerful, this release was significantly more experimental and dark.
And the fact that her music took that a darker turn seems far more haunting given that the young artist was dealing with opiate addiction in 2016. That same year, she dropped the album 'Ninety', which included lyrics like "Demons dancing on me like I’ve been feening /Hard to believe I’ve been 90 days clean," signaling that she was three months sober at the time.
The rapper was committed to staying sober, so much so that despite the devastating loss of her mother exactly 365 days after her graduation from rehab, she refused to let her demons get the better of her. "My mom would be really tight with me if I used her as excuse to fall off," she said, adding, "It’s just more reason to work and get all this s**t done." And out of that resilience came her fourth EP, 'music 2 die 2', in 2017.
Chynna stated the album was for "angry people with too much pride to show how angry they are," and for many, it spoke to them on a level only someone dealing with the same struggles could connect with.
But for Chynna, it was more than just her own internal battles that she had to fight. She was surrounded by an industry full of drug-users — a habit that has plagued all entertainers across all fields — ultimately forcing her to recognize and confront what she was really fighting against.
She said, "I realized I didn’t have control of the situation anymore the day that I didn’t even feel like getting high, and my body was like, 'B***h, you better get high before you start throwing up and acting like a fool.' It was really frustrating." She added, "It got to the point where I had to do something just to be able to get onstage and do my job. I didn’t like that. That was taking it too far."
Amidst her struggle and recovery, Chynna discovered a voice within herself that didn't need the help of a substance to find its way to the surface. And while she preferred not to speak about her struggles initially, she found it was important to do so. She said, "There are a lot more people dealing with this s**t than you think, and they should know that someone who looks like me or does this could have the same problem as the fiend on the corner. And it was partially because of the s**t that happened with Yams, or just how many friends I have lost to different stuff. And I just — I didn’t want to lie."
Chynna lost another dear friend, rapper Mac Miller, to drug overdose in 2018. She posted a photo of the two of them in his memory after he passed. And now, her friends do the same for her.