Chika Leaves Social Media After Online Attacks, Suicidal Ideation

Grammy-nominated, and GLAAD-Award-winning rapper Chika has updated her fans and peers after posting some tweets that indicated she is struggling with mental health and suicidal ideation.

In the statement, she wrote that she is safe and doing a little better. "I am alive. I am okay," she tweeted. "Thank you to everyone who has reached out to check in. It's been a very intense week. I'm not retiring. After what I've endured in the past few days, I'm not ever allowing anything to stop me or almost take me from this ghetto ass earth."

She also thanked Cardi B, who reached out to her after she had posted struggles. Chika said Cardi has supported her for a long time and understands the position she's in.

"I will be stepping back from social media for the time being, whether that means silence or just having someone else post for me," she announced. "I'm too valuable to be tampered with. And it took almost not being here to realize this internet shit isn't worth it."

Chika is one of the most exciting young rappers in the game. This year, at the age of 24, she was nominated for a Grammy for Best New Artist and won a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Breakthrough Artist.

Back at the end of March, Chika started tweeting that she wasn't doing well. "idk man, not to be that constant voice on the TL that's either critical of something or slightly depressing, but i've just been sad lately. super sad & super tired," she wrote before deactivating her account.

After she reactivated her account after about a week, she tweeted out some thoughts on the state of current mainstream female rappers. Some took it as a slight against others like Cardi B and started to reply on social media calling her out. This led to another tweet about her mental health.

"Full transparency, i was on the verge of getting the fuck up outta here 3 times last week, so excuse me if i don't care about whatever the hell y'all be talking about frfr," she tweeted. "This shit is a mf circus and the things I vent on here are crucial to MY mental health. sharing my opinion freely is literally a saving grace for me," she added.

Soon, stans of other female rappers were tweeting shade and insults about Chika, and her tweets became more combative. Finally, after several days of replying to trolls, she tweeted that she was retiring from music. "There's some live show coming up at the Wiltern soon. i'll have details on it or whatever. last time I'm performing shit. i'm so over it," she said on April 10.

Chika then posted a disturbing video on her Instagram stories stating that she was suicidal and hoped all the trolls harassing her were as well.

In the video she said she had been suicidal for a while and added "it has very little to do with you guys because nothing you do matters. Let me repeat that. Nothing you do matters. You're nobody. The only thing you do is dogpile on top of people's other mental problems and make them worse. I came on here today and said I'm retiring because that's where I'm at physically, mentally and emotionally, and you stupid bitchess flooded my comments immediately not knowing what the fuck I'm going through, but you want me to give a good goddamn about you and your stupid ass fifth grade stan friends. No."

In a second video she added, "I'm in therapy. I'm literally working through shit and sometimes I need to just talk. Sometimes I need to just tweet something. Me saying I want to retire, which is something I told my manager yesterday, you know, you just think that it's funny, it's all fun and fucking games ... attack me, like I'm the issue."

Trolls continued to attack her, screen recording the story and posting it on social media and mocking her. Some even went as far as to say she should kill herself.

Thus reaction led to Chika posting a note on her Twitter on April 10. "Today I shared that I was thinking of retiring because the mental toll being in the industry has taken on me is not something you bounce back from easily," she wrote. "I've told my team, I've told my therapist, I've told friends and acquaintances. today i told twitter. What followed was a hoard of psychotic fans rejoining in the decline of my mental health, harassing me as if I spoke to them first. When you have depression, the negative self talk you have towards yourself is deafening. now imagine a slew of weirdos dogpiling on top of thoughts you already have to fight off yourself. it's not f***ing cool, it's not 'trolling' or 'stan culture,' you're pushing people to the point of no return."

She ended the note by saying "with that said, I'm out. If it doesn't work, I'll try again."

Today, Chika confirmed that she was referring to suicide in her note. After she tweeted that she was leaving social media, she posted one more, longer, note.

"I made a video, clearly breaking down while trying to communicate that I was being pushed to a point where this was making my own internal battle worse, and the last tweet I remember seeing was someone excited at the possibility that I might hurt myself," she wrote.

"The note screenshot was not about quitting, it was about ending my life," she continued. "Because that day, I tried. I dunno who called who, but paramedics broke my door down to save my life. Thank you to whomever was looking out for me that night. I was not okay."

Again, she clarified that this was a longterm problem, and not just the result of recent trolls, but she called for people to be kinder on the internet. "We need to listen more when people say they aren't okay," she wrote. "We need to be mindful with our words. We need to treat each other like humans. Petty arguments are a part of internet culture, but being pushed to a point that caused me to go through the most traumatic week of my life is something that didn't and *doesn't* need to happen. To anyone." She ended the note by saying that she will be fine, and encouraged readers to "take care of yourselves and the people you love. We're all we got."

If you are a trans or gender-nonconforming person considering suicide, Trans Lifeline can be reached at (877) 565-8860. LGBTQ+ youth (ages 24 and younger) can reach the Trevor Project Lifeline at (866) 488-7386. You can also access chat services at TheTrevorProject.org/Help or text START to 678678. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at (800) 273-8255 can be reached 24 hours a day by people of all ages and identities.

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