I’ve listened to his music before — you can probably still find it in a few of my old playlists. But his song “Romantic Homicide” has taken on a whole new meaning after his 15-year-old alleged ex-girlfriend was found dead Sept. 8 in the front trunk of an impounded Tesla registered to him.

According to the Los Angeles Police Department, there is no official link between 20-year-old David Anthony Burke, also known by his musician name, “D4vd,” and Celeste Rivas Hernandez. But down the internet rabbit hole, sites like the New York Post and LA Times have reported connections between the two. 

The first of these connections is one of D4vd’s unfinished tracks which leaked on Soundcloud in December 2023. In the song, titled “Celeste_Demo unfin,” D4vd professes his love for a woman named Celeste — the name of the victim. The two also allegedly had matching tattoos.

This all raises two important questions: Can we separate art from the artist, and can we ignore or repurpose the meaning behind songs which might be morally questionable?

Boycotting music because it does not uplift our spirits is a much different question than boycotting the music of someone known for committing heinous actions — there should be a clear distinction.

Even though there is no official link between him and Hernandez, he is still involved in this case, and that should turn us away from consuming his music.

D4vd wrote “Romantic Homicide” three years ago. Now, it is his No. 1 listened to song on Spotify, with more than 1.7 billion streams. For comparison, Britney Spears’s “Hit Me Baby One More Time” has around 1.2 billion streams, and that’s over a time span of 26 years. This demarks some kind of cultural significance. 

The music video for the song depicts a young woman in a white dress on a white bed with blood splattered on and around her. During that scene, he sings, “In the back of my mind, I killed you/ And I didn’t even regret it/ I can’t believe I said it/ But it’s true/ I hate you.”

In a 2022 interview, D4vd said people on the internet have provided meaning for those lines — the thing being killed could be a past self or an addiction. But he did not explicitly say that was his interpretation of the lyrics. He just stressed that the killing done was not actualized.

“It’s all in the mind, because that’s the most secure place you can be,” D4vd said. “So if you can expel that thought from your mind, then everything else will just come together.”

The potential ambiguity of this song, however, is made more perplexing by the fictional lore behind D4vd’s storytelling. Such as, “IT4MI,” a character who serves as an antagonist alter-ego. D4vd first described this alter-ego in a 2023 YouTube video. 

“The character you see here today is named ‘Itami’ which means pain in Japanese,” D4vd wrote in the video’s description. “He wears a blindfold for the sole purpose of not being held accountable for the pain he causes.”

Read in context of the Hernandez situation, the character known for causing pain and being blind to the pain he causes, poses a unique juxtaposition against the theme of a romantic homicide. In fact, the  character of “IT4MI” was featured in the music video for “Romantic Homicide,” depicted as a blindfolded D4vd standing over the bloodied body of a young woman. This juxtaposition should feel unsettling.

Music cannot be wholly separated from the musician because their mind and spirit are written into the notes and lines. Depending on the settlement of the Hernandez case, this character could be more than just a character.

Music brings us together, and can be the center of community. Sometimes a slightly scandalous song like “Baby Got Back” can speak more to the everyday human experience than Beethoven. The words you sing do matter, and you should pay attention to them, but sometimes it is okay to just dance to the beat and have fun with it. There is a line, though. Cardi B, in the overtly pornographic music video for her song “WAP.” Lil Nas X, when he lap dances on the “Devil” during the music video for his song “MONTERO.” How can you unsee that? How can you listen to that the same way and claim it is enjoyable? We would need to become so disconnected from reality and ourselves to deem such a thing worthy of our time and ears. 

In the case of D4vd’s “Romantic Homicide,” that line cannot be fully drawn yet. If, like he pointed out, the “death” and “killing” in the song represent the letting go of a past self, addiction, or mistake, the message could be potentially beautiful. But that would be an overly romanticized reading of the lines. The title of the song, and the images he depicts in the songwriting and music video, are much more violent. The blindfolded “IT4MI,” who D4vd says is “not being held accountable for the pain he causes,” is standing over the girl’s dead body in the video. These are pungent images, and even more so if D4vd is found guilty in connection to Rivera’s death. 

If D4vd is guilty of romantic homicide, which was committed in real life instead of the mind, we cannot give airtime to any music connected with his spirit. You cannot divorce a song like that from its implications, nor the rest of the artist from the musician. For now, the jury is still out, but time will reveal the verdict.