Model and rising hip-hop star Chynna Rogers died on Wednesday, her manager confirmed to TheWrap. She was 25.
“I can regrettably confirm Chynna passed away,” Rogers’ manager John Miller said via email. He added that her family said, “Chynna was deeply loved and will be sorely missed.”
A representative for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health confirmed to TheWrap on Thursday that Rogers died of an accidental drug overdose in her native Philadelphia. The Brooklyn-based rapper had been open about past battles with opioid addiction.
Rogers was born in Philadelphia but resided in Bushwick, Brooklyn at the time of her death. She began a modeling career at age 14 after she was discovered and signed by Ford Models.
Her music career started just a year later, when she linked up with Harlem-based rap collective A$AP Mob (which counts rap star A$AP Rocky among its most notable members). Rogers’ early singles, “Glen Coco” and “Selfie”, released in 2013 and 2014, drew millions of views on YouTube and soon became viral hits. She released her debut EP, “Ninety,” in 2016 shortly after her 22nd birthday.
Rogers’ January release, an EP called “in case i die first,” drew praise from reviewers including Pitchfork, which described her work as “letting the world in on a late-night car-ride therapy session, full of convoluted, introspective thoughts where Chynna is both the shrink and patient.”
A 2018 Pitchfork feature on Rogers described her struggles with drug addiction: “In early 2016, as her music was racking up thousands of streams and views, Chynna was in the throes of an opiate addiction: the result, she says, of suppressing negative feelings rather than facing them head-on.”