The Inevitable Fall Off - Before I Forget Podcast with Lil Xan - Episode 2
Lil Xan traces his rise with "Betrayed" in 2017, the drug addiction that followed fame, and a near-fatal overdose that led to sobriety in 2022. Now four years clean and living in Utah, he redefines success away from streaming numbers and toward staying alive.
Chapters
Mic check, 1, 2, 1, 2. Oh man, I'm tired. Welcome back everybody, this is episode 2 of the Before I Forget podcast. Hope everybody's having a great day, night, evening, morning, whatever time it may be, wherever you may be in the world. I hope you're doing fantastic. Um, Yeah, I want to start this off by just thanking everybody for the positive reception, uh, to the first episode of the podcast, episode 1. Um, I believe it was sobriety and grief— grief and sobriety. Sorry if you hear that in the background, my cats are going absolutely crazy in the background. But I just wanted to say thank you guys for all the positive reception to the first episode. It was a very sensitive topic. Um, But, you know, it was very therapeutic to talk about the things I talked about in that episode. And, um, yeah, it just, it was nice. And the reception that you guys have given me has been overwhelmingly amazing. So I really appreciate that. It's currently, I believe it's almost 3 AM. 3 AM. I always like to do these podcasts very late, late at night or early in the morning, however you perceive it. I'm kind of a night owl. Um, maybe some people that are listening can, uh, can relate to that. Um, yeah, so I just appreciate that first episode was dope. And, uh, yeah, the title of this episode is called— drum roll please— no, I'm just kidding. The title is The Fall Off. The fall-off. And, and what is that? What does that mean, the fall-off? I wanted to talk about the inevitable fall-off. Maybe that's what the title will be. I've been debating whether it's just called the fall-off or the inevitable fall-off, but when you click this video, I'll have figured it all out. And I just kind of wanted to talk about, as an artist, being an artist, and you know, there's probably a bunch of artists that listen to this up-and-coming artist, what it feels like to have achieved a pretty good level of fame back in the day, and you know, what happens all these years later, you know, when you're not, I guess, in your prime anymore. My prime being, I would say, 2017, 2018, you know, uh, when you felt like you were on top of the world. Felt like you could do no wrong, that you were unstoppable, you know, the ego that came with it. And then, you know, it's now 8, almost 9 years, I believe, since 2018. My math might be off. I'm terrible with numbers. But just what happens, you know, all these years later, how it affects one's mental health, life, you know, all that good jazz. And again, sorry if you hear my cats meowing or, you know, they're in the background there. We love the cats. They're just going a little crazy tonight. But yeah, I wanted to talk about just all these years later, what life is like now. As I talked about in the first episode, I'm almost 4 years sober. You know, I'll probably find a way to tie sobriety into this somehow. But I'll just start off, like, you know, taking you back to 2018, good old 2018. Or actually, no, I should start a little bit before 2018. I should start around 2016, maybe even 2015. No, I'll go 2016. I'm a new artist, you know, just got all these face tattoos. You know, a lot of people don't realize this. I got the face tattoos a year or two, maybe a couple years before I would even start making music. I got my first face tattoo. That's a common misconception. A lot of people think I started making music, got the face tattoos, uh, to kind of fit the, the mold, the, the genre of the SoundCloud era. But no, I got the face tattoos a couple years before. A little side tangent here, I know, but, uh, I, I just like the art of tattoos. I thought it was very cool and rebellious to have a tattoo on your face. Believe it or not, my first tattoo was on my face. It was my mom's name Candy on my face. So yeah, a little side story there. But you know, I'm a new artist. I'm not really doing shows yet. I don't think anybody would really book me. I was very unknown. I made my way out to Austin, Texas for, I believe, yeah, South by Southwest of 2016. 2016. Yeah, I'm doing my thing, just trying to network. That was a big thing in the beginning back in 2016 was I felt like I really had to network. I thought that that was the big way in, you know, meet people, connect with people, and that would ultimately, you know, in my mind, lead me to bigger opportunities and stuff like that. And I will say, you know, from the bottom of my heart, I miss those days. I really do. I, I, and, and I'm talking about the days before I was this, you know, 2018, this big artist, this, you know, everybody knew who I was, blah blah blah, whatever. I'm, I, my, I loved the days before that, the, the days leading up to blowing up per se. Those were the funnest days in my opinion when it was all about the grind. It was all about— really, it was about the music. That's what I loved about it. It was just make good music or music— not, not even that— make music that I like and hopefully other people will relate and, and vibe with the music. And, and if you get any sort of recognition from it any sort of money from it, any sort of fame from it. That's just a plus, you know, that's just an added bonus to the whole package because I really got into it for the love of art, for the love of music. Um, and yeah, yeah, and you know, fast forward 2017, after a year of really being unknown and, you know, just making music, grinding every day, trying to just perfect the craft and whatnot. I come out with this song called Slingshot. Maybe some people that are listening are familiar with the song Slingshot, but it was my first taste of, I guess, virality, recognition, and yeah, it was a very weird but very cool thing. Just to think that people were recognizing one of my songs, any of my songs, um, you know, just giving me critical positive feedback. It was a real cool thing. And this is only a year after I just started making music, maybe a little bit longer. But then we reached the next song, and I'm dropping songs in between here, um, you know, but they're doing well, but not as much as Slingshot did. And then we hit this boom. We hit this crazy big, just, you know, I don't even know how to describe it. It was magic. It felt like magic. We dropped Betrayed. Good old Betrayed, man. Oh man, I could say a lot about that song. I love the song. I'm very grateful and proud of that record. And that song, that one song took me to the next level. Um, I guess that's what you'd say. It took me to the next level, and I wasn't used to that. This is going off of, like, if you look at the timeline, I've only been making music for a year and a half at this point, almost, maybe almost reaching the 2-year mark. And then we hit Betrayed, and boom, that takes me to levels I didn't even think were achievable, because again, I was really just in it to make music for the love of music. And anything that came with it was a bonus. And, you know, this is what I started off, it was 2016, and now we're reaching the end of 2017, almost the beginning of 2018. I got record labels calling. I mean, we damn near, we went to every record label. We went to Atlantic, Columbia, 300, Def Jam, Interscope. I was busy. Every day going to these label meetings and whatnot. My schedule was packed, and for me that was crazy because I just started making music like under 2 years ago, if even that. It was a crazy time, man, and now we're reaching into 2018. I'm doing shows I'm doing North American tours. I'm, I'm doing a world tour. It's absolutely insane. Um, I'm exhausted. And I mean, if you watch my first video, obviously you know that I've struggled with addiction in the past, and this was the prime of my addiction, by the way. I was, I was cope— I was so stressed. I was in the public zeitgeist. I was being scrutinized left and right. You either loved Lil Xan or you hated Lil Xan. There was really no in-between. But the only thing that was constant was I felt like every month I was just getting more and more and more famous, whether it was from me squishing my face into my girlfriend at the time, Noah Cyrus's cheek, I'm sure people have seen that meme. Great meme, by the way. Or it was outrageous things like, uh, what was another one? Hot Cheetos. Me overdosing on Hot Cheetos. That was a good one. But just stuff like this. Oh, honorable mention. Like, how did I forget this? Uh, giving Tupac a 2 out of 10 when an interviewer asked me. By the way, I don't feel the same way. I was a dumb kid back then, and I was just I was stupid on drugs. Doesn't— not my opinion today, but I gave Tupac a 2 out of 10. I was being funny. I was just trying to make a joke. But stuff like that is what I'm getting at, really amplified everything. And if you didn't know about Lil Xan before the Tupac stuff, you knew about him now, regardless if you've ever heard Betrayed or Slingshot. The Tupac shit was a big catalyst for, one, a lot of hate, but it got my name out there a lot more. And, you know, in a way, even if it was more negative than positive, it made me more famous. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, a curse, you know, that's a different topic. But it was a crazy time. So, and what I'm getting at is just all these things that happened from 2016 to 2018, whether it was a hit record or controversy, you know, with Noah Cyrus, Tana Mongeau, Hot Cheetos, it put me in the spotlight on a level that I never really knew was possible for a kid like me at the time. You know, I come from a town, I love my hometown. It's Redlands, California. Shout out to the 909, the Inland Empire. We love Redlands, California. But it's a town where nobody had really done anything from. I didn't come from like a poppin' city like Los Angeles or, you know, just a big mecca of a city. So my city didn't really have a big scene. But, you know, and so for a kid like me to also be a high school dropout, you know, didn't come from much growing up, to a few years later now feeling at the time, feeling like I was on top of the world. And I will say at the time, you know, I don't have that ego now. I don't have— I am such a different person than back then. But this is during that time. You know, I felt unstoppable. And I'm sure a lot of it was also due to the, uh, the narcotics that I was ingesting, um, you know, copious amounts. Um, and a big part of why I was indulging in a lot of drug use was because of also these big things that were catapulting me into the spotlight. Like the things I said, like the Tupac thing, dating celebrities, Hot Cheeto incident. And, you know, I— the only way I could really cope with that was to medicate, to self-medicate, to be on benzos, which is Xanax. I would later get into opiates like Vicodin and Percocet and OxyContin. And that was really the only way. And I will say this, drugs are bad. Okay, drugs are bad. Okay, like, they really are, like, but I really do think I, I wouldn't be here if I wasn't. It's such a, it's such a yin-yang thing. I, I, drugs ruined my life, but also I wouldn't have been able to even cope as a rap star or anything if I didn't have, in particular, the Xanax. It's such a weird balance where, you know, it ruined my life, but it also made me able during that time to even cope with being scrutinized in the public eye, the public media. It's really a weird thing, man. I truly still don't understand it. But I am happy to be sober, you know, almost 4 years sober now. And yeah, that's what I wanted to make this episode about. I wanted just to talk about all these years later, the inevitable fall-off. You know, what is my life like now compared to 2017, 2018 when I was on top of the world? And I can safely say, like, I'm doing a lot better. You know, obviously I don't have hit records out anymore, but I will say I still— every time I leave the house, I still— like, if I go to the store or go sit down at a restaurant, I still am approached by, you know, the staff and then the cooks in the back. Just a funny story. I just moved out here to Utah. Shout out to Utah. Just moved from Southern California to the good old state of Utah a couple months ago. I've only been to 2 restaurants out here so far, but each time I've gone, I've taken pictures with the whole staff. The manager, and you know, it's cool. Like, honest— honestly, if you ask me, I didn't think all these years later I would even still be like recognizable or people would still want pictures. But that's probably just me being my biggest hater and doubting myself, you know. But, um, yeah, like, because people always ask, do you still get recognized? Do you, you know, still take pictures with people? And I can safely say Yes, I, I do every time I leave the house. Uh, I will say this though, it's nowhere near as much as back in like the 2017, 2018 SoundCloud era. That was a whole different beast. When I would leave anywhere, the house, go anywhere back in 2018, I would end up coming back, probably have taken like 100, if not more pictures depending on where I went. And as, as to now, if I leave the house, go, I might take a couple pictures here and there, maybe few. If I go to a public place, I'll probably take at most maybe 10 if it's a real public place. But that's the difference. And you know what, I will say this, I am so happy that it's not like how it was in 2018, because I still suffer from anxiety. And I don't know if being sober, because I don't have benzos and opiates to rely on to cope anymore, I don't know if I could, with my anxiety, go out in public and be, you know, just that noticed. And yeah, so I will say it's died down a lot. Thank God it's died down a lot. But I am still very grateful and still very appreciative of the fan base that I do have. I still feel like I have, like, it's very small, it's a lot smaller now, but I have a real cult diehard fan base. And what I will say is I'll take that real small cult diehard fan base over being loved by the, you know, the— I don't know what you call it— being loved by everybody and You know, I really appreciate the— yeah, I really appreciate what I have now. Don't get me wrong, back then it was cool having, you know, 9, 10 million monthly listeners on Spotify compared to— I think I have 1.1, 1.2 million now. I'll take this any day of the week, any day of the month, the year. It's a lot more calm, and that's one thing that I've— I'm 29 years old now. I just turned 29. I'm so much happier. I, I want to live a calmer life, you know. I've— I got all of that crazy rock star shit, rock star lifestyle energy out of me years ago, years and years ago, especially when I got sober. Um, so, you know, I'm just happy to be living a more calm life. That's what I want to live. I want to live a very calm life, um, and I want to live a calmer life where I can cater to my small cult diehard fan base. I still love making music. I will always love making music, like till the day I die. I will probably still be releasing mixtapes, albums, singles. That's never gonna change. And I feel like, you know, the kind of fandom that I have now is way more, you know, appreciative and, uh, respective. And, you know, they— the people that listen to Lil Xan music in 2025, they genuinely— they know what's up. They, they actually care. I feel like they care for me as well. Whereas before, when I was, you know, popping everywhere in the world in 2018, I felt like it was more just like, uh you know, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? People just listened because it was trend— trendy. There you go. Trendy was— is a better word. That's the word I'm looking for. Um, so I'm just a lot more— I'm a lot more happy with a calmer life. Um, you know, and, um, yeah, man, the inevitable fall-off. I was just thinking about this the other day, to change topics. You know, obviously I want to talk about the fall-off and what that means to an artist. Is it a death sentence? You know, because you see the term fall-off— this guy fell off, this rapper, whatever— they use it in any, any kind of media, any kind of saying. It's just, oh, he fell off, when someone has reached a peak in their career but, you know, for some reason, whether it's time, the passage of time, or, you know, something that happened in their career, they're not at the peak anymore. They're not in the highlight of their fame. What is that like? And how does that affect somebody? You know, how does that affect their mental state, their physical state? You know what I mean? And I wanted to tell a story of, uh, I would say people started to— Say I fell off um... In either middle of 2019 Crazy right? Top! I'm on top of the world in 2018 And then you reach the middle end of 2019 that's when start see ya know first YouTube videos coming out like uh The failure of Lil Xan AKA Diego about me They still make these same video every year about me Shout out to those people, man. It is what it is. They gotta make their bread. I get it. Um, I— if you, if you go by YouTube, I, I've fallen off every year since 2019. But anyways, uh, 2019 was the first time that I started to see, you know, the YouTube videos, uh, Lil Xan bankrupt, the, the fall of Lil Xan. And this is around the time where I'm not sober, I'm still using probably the most amount of drugs during this era. And this is right before the pandemic. So I'm starting to see these videos about my fall off, this and that. It hurts. I'm not going to lie. I wasn't used to something like that. It was fucking up my mental state, but I had the crutch that was Xanax and opiates to fall back on. So I would— every time I would see a negative thing about me on the internet saying I fell off, or a negative YouTube video talking about my failure, my failures, that I'm a failure, I'm bankrupt, I fell off, I would turn to Xanax, I would turn to OxyContin. Um, so I was able to manage it via drugs, as fucked up as that sounds. And then you get the pandemic. Oh boy, the good old pandemic. Probably one of the worst times of my life was during the pandemic. You know, everybody's locked up, locked inside their houses. You know, everybody's afraid to go out and communicate with people in person. The government is telling you to stay home. And what does one do, especially me, a drug addict? I medicate. I can't leave the house, that's okay. Oh, I can take drugs in my house and have a whole adventure inside my house. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I don't need to go out. I need— you know, the government's telling me to stay in. There's this deadly virus that's ravaging the country. Okay, but that means I'm gonna medicate even more because what else am I gonna do? All I know is how to medicate off these prescription pills. And so the pandemic turned my addiction from 10 to 11, 12, 13, 14, fucking 100. If I was a bad drug addict before, and then you add the pandemic, plus now we got all these videos talking about I fell off, I'm a failure as a rapper, I'm a failure as a human being. I'm bankrupt. It almost killed me. It really did. It almost killed me. My spirit was down. I was the most depressed that I'd ever been. And yeah, all I knew how to do to treat it was Xanax, Xanax, Xanax. I know, ironic. Lil Xan addicted to Xanax. How do you think I got the name? It's very fitting. But I'll brush over the pandemic. There's a lot of stuff. Maybe for a later episode, I'll talk about how bad that era was for me and individual things that I went through and struggled with. But I want to glance over it for now because I'm, you know, I'm trying to keep the theme of how it affects me later in life and, you know, closer to nowadays. And after the pandemic was over, I started to get my shit together. You know, I was like, if I keep, if I keep up doing these drugs and whatnot, I'm going to die. So I started the journey of getting sober. It took me a few times, but I finally got it. I finally got sober. It was really hard. It took me— it took a lot out of me. And, oh man, it was crazy. I had a bunch of seizures, almost died, but I got sober. And once I got sober, where I'm getting at with this is now more than ever. This is like 2022. I got— I'm so bad with years, but I think it was around 2022, 2023. No, it was 2022. My bad. Yeah. So I'm sober now and I don't have my coping mechanism anymore as far as, you know, all these videos are coming out even more now than they were in 2019 about the failure of me, how I'm a fucking loser. How I suck, you know, how just all bad negative things on the internet, whether it's in the form of YouTube videos. And like I said, I had already had a little taste of this in the past, but I had my coping mechanism. I had my Xanax and I had my OxyContin to at least take the edge off. But now I don't have that. Now I don't have the one thing that I would use to deal with being scrutinized in the public eye, the public zeitgeist. So how does that affect me? How does that affect my mental health? It was hard. I'm not gonna lie. My, you know, they always say, oh, once you get sober, everything's good. Once you get sober, you're good. You know, like, that's the big thing is just getting sober and all your Some people make it like, all your problems will go away. You'll be fine once you get sober. But it was the exact opposite. I'm not going to lie. I think once I got sober, I was proud of myself. The people around me were proud. My parents were proud. My friends, close friends and family were very proud. I mean, and I was proud of myself. But my depression got worse. My depression reached the lowest point. In my life that I'd ever have, that I'd ever had, um, once I got sober. Um, and that was because, again, I didn't have, you know, the one thing that I knew was able to at least take the edge off. And, you know, a big thing people will obviously say, like, did you think about relapsing? How often did you think you know, to going back to that lifestyle of, of, you know, copious amounts of medication. And I'm not gonna lie to you, I thought about it all the time. I, I, I— because in my, in my head, my addict, my addicted stupid brain kept telling me when I got sober, you know what'll make things better? You know that, that if you go out and get a Xanax, nothing, nothing on the internet is gonna affect you, you know, you Papa Xan aka Diego Diego and all those bad videos about you falling off and all the stupid shit that people are saying that you don't think is true, you know, to your character, it won't matter anymore. And I struggled really hard, um, in the beginning. Um, it was, it was a terrible time. Crazy, right, how you would think getting sober after years and years of addiction would be it, would be the end-all goal. Like, now you're happy, you're sober. Like, but it's not like that. And that's a big thing that I wanted to touch on today was getting sober is the first step, but then you need to learn how to reintegrate. I have a speech impediment if you haven't noticed. Reintegrate. There you go. My speech impediment is going crazy. Reintegrate into life, you know, um, how, how to join society again because I was such a broken human being from all my years of addiction and now I'm here sober watching all these videos about how I'm just a failure, failure as a human being, rapper, the inevitable fall off, you gotta love it. And it was the hardest time of my life. It was, yeah, by far the hardest time of my life. But I will say, though, there is a light at the end of the tunnel because years later, this was 2022, 2023, 2024, now I'm starting to get the hang of it. I'm not thinking about relapsing as much as I used to in the beginning. And now we've hit 2025, and I, I'm not perfect yet. I haven't relapsed, by the way. Everybody always tries to insinuate that I have, or they don't know anything. I haven't relapsed. I've almost been sober for 4 years. But I can safely say that in the year 2025, the term falling off and the YouTube videos that they still make— they still make these same videos to this day— they, uh, They don't affect me as much as they used to. I'm not perfect. They, they still affect me maybe 10 to 15% compared to affecting me like 100%, if that makes sense. So I've made a lot of progress and I'm very proud of the progress that I've made. Um, but it was a hard journey. A lot of, a lot of downs, downs, downs, downs, a lot of downs with very few ups. But to anybody listening that might be struggling or going through a current thing, maybe you're an artist out there listening and you feel very similar to the things I've talked about, the story that I've told today, um, you got this. You really do. You got this. I know for a fact that if I was able to navigate sobriety after being a real bad drug addict, that you got this. And that any— I just want you to know that anything is possible in this life. I never thought that I would be able to overcome any of the hardships, whether it was dealing with mental distress from being again scrutinized in the public eye, public media. There was times where I felt like the world absolutely fucking hated me, wanted me to die. I've gotten thousands and thousands of death threats. I, I still do sometimes get death threats even today, you know, but I've reached a point where, again, I'm not 100%, I'm not perfect, but I've, I've gotten to a point where the stuff in the public eye and things that people say about me, they don't affect me. I won't say at all because that's a lie, but they don't affect me so much more than what they used to. Like, if they used— again, if they used to affect me 100%, they only affect me 5% now. And that's an incredible journey when I think about it. I think about the younger me that was just getting into the music industry, full of hope, you know, full of, uh, just wonder and, you know, magic. I— it was magic in the beginning, and, uh, I never knew what to expect. And I always— ah, man, life is precious. I just want everybody to know that I'm very grateful to still be alive today. There was a lot of times where I didn't think that I would, I would make it, you know, whether it was from an unintentional overdose or an intentional overdose, but I'm really glad that I made it. Um, there's a lot of people that I love on this planet, and, uh, yeah, I always get a little choked up when I think about, you know, the past and stuff. But yeah, I just wanted to know— I just wanted you to know that you can do it. Anybody that's struggling out there, anybody that's an artist. Even if— take drugs out of the equation. Maybe you're just suffering with mental health issues, you know, whether maybe you're a celebrity, maybe you're not a celebrity, you know, whether it's people saying you fell off or you didn't fall off. I don't know. Everybody's going through their own version of a fall off or an inevitable fall off. Whether, you know, it could be anything from any aspect in life. But, um, yeah, you know, does anybody ever really fall off? Probably. They probably do. But it's how you cope with that and how you move forward and, you know, how you tackle life after the inevitable fall off. But I just wanted to say, um, thank you guys for listening to this episode. I'm keeping it a little shorter today, um, but I will have more episodes out. I'm gonna try to shoot for episodes every week, weekly episodes. Um, we'll see, we'll see how true I stick to that, but that's what I'm shooting for. Um, but yeah, the inevitable fall off. Diego aka Lil Xan And I'm signing off. I love you guys so much, and thank you for listening to, uh, my ramblings. I really appreciate it, and I hope everybody has a good night. Thank you.
