Captured on iPhone days ago by Mitchell Royel ❤️ Say a prayer for Jeffree Star, for the MySpace kids, and for the bands that defined an era—Millionaires, Blood on the Dance Floor, The Medic Droid, and all the scene legends who gave us the soundtrack to our most chaotic, glitter-covered days 🖤✨
Dear Jeffree,
I need to tell you something, and I need to tell it loud.
A few days ago, I was walking through the mall. Polished white floors. Sunlight pouring through the skylights like the building was being blessed. Louis Vuitton on one side, Rolex on the other, glittering in their glass cases. Then I looked up and saw a flash of hot pink hair moving through all that beige and gold.
It was you, Jeffree Star. In a sharp black blazer, cool as a museum at midnight, looking exactly like the poster I never had the courage to hang on my bedroom wall.
My heart did something I can only describe as a full choreographed routine. I couldn't breathe. My palms went slick. And then, before my anxiety could talk me out of it, I walked up to you.
You were kind. You were patient. You let a stranger in a patterned navy shirt and khakis step into your orbit for a moment. I held up my phone, and we took a selfie right there between Louis and Rolex. I'm grinning in that picture like a kid on the last day of school. You're giving that calm, knowing half-smile. It's the most important photo on my phone. I've looked at it more times than I'll ever admit.
I didn't say everything I wanted to say in that moment. How could I? So I'm saying it here, out in the open, where it belongs.
Growing up, I didn't fit. Not in my school. Not in my neighborhood. Some days, not even in my own house.
I was the kid who felt too much, too loud, too strange. I was the kid people whispered about. I learned early how to shrink. How to sit in the back. How to laugh at jokes that were really about me. How to walk home the long way so fewer people could see me.
There were nights when the walls of my bedroom felt like they were closing in. Nights when I lay awake wondering if I would ever feel like I belonged anywhere. Nights I'm not ready to write about in full, even now. But you should know they were real, and they were heavy, and I carried them alone for a long time.
Then I found your music.
I remember the glow of the computer screen. The hum of the old desktop. The headphones that only worked if you held the cord at exactly the right angle. And then your voice came through, electric and unapologetic, and something inside me snapped awake.
Your songs didn't ask permission. They didn't apologize. They were loud and glittery and sharp-edged and strange, and they made strange feel like a superpower instead of a sentence.
When I played Beauty Killer, I didn't feel like the weird kid anymore. I felt like the main character. I felt dangerous in the best way. I felt like maybe the things that made me different were the very things that would one day make me shine.
Your music was my armor on the bus ride to school. It was my war paint before hard conversations. It was the soundtrack I played when I cried, and the soundtrack I played when I finally stopped crying and decided to keep going.
You taught me that you could be wounded and still wear lip gloss. That you could be mocked and still walk like a runway was laid out just for you. That you could take every insult thrown at you, melt it down, and turn it into something gorgeous.
I don't think you knew a kid like me was listening. But I was. Every single word.
Let's be honest. I was never MySpace famous. Not even close.
You were the king of that whole glittering, chaotic universe. Your page was a world of its own — the bold colors, the dramatic photos, the music that autoplayed the second you clicked in, the sheer audacity of it all. You weren't just posting online. You were building a kingdom out of pixels and pink and pure nerve.
Meanwhile, I had a page that maybe forty people visited, and half of them were my cousins. I spent hours fiddling with layouts, picking the perfect profile song, choosing my Top 8 like it was a matter of national security. I studied your page the way some kids studied for finals. Not to copy it, but to understand it. To figure out how someone could be so fearlessly, gloriously themselves in front of the whole world.
That page showed me that you didn't need permission to exist out loud. You just needed the guts to hit "publish."
Which brings me to the confession I've been holding onto for years.
My first single is called Crowd Nine.
And Jeffree, it's yours in so many ways.
It was born out of every late night spent with your music in my ears. The beat carries that same restless, neon energy I first felt through those busted headphones. The lyrics hold the same refusal to shrink. The visuals I dreamed up for it — the color, the drama, the edge — all trace back to the bold, unbothered aesthetic you made famous.
Crowd Nine is about standing in a room full of people who don't understand you and deciding to float anyway. It's about being lifted by your own strangeness instead of crushed by it. It's about the euphoria of finally being seen, even if the only one seeing you at first is you.
I wrote it because you showed me I could. I recorded it because you showed me that being heard is worth being judged. And every time I play it, there's a little piece of that kid in the dark bedroom who gets to step into the light.
I'm not saying it's perfect. I'm not saying it'll top any charts. But it's real, and it's mine, and it exists because your music reached a lonely kid and told him that his voice mattered too.
So thank you.
Thank you for being loud when the world wanted you quiet. Thank you for being colorful when the world handed you gray. Thank you for making music that felt like a lifeline to people like me who were hanging on by a thread.
Thank you for stopping in that mall. For letting me stand next to you for one bright, ridiculous, beautiful moment. For giving that grown-up version of the kid who used to hide a chance to stand tall beside the person who helped him stop hiding.
You'll probably never know how much that selfie meant. But I do. And now, so do you.
God, I come to You with a full heart and a grateful spirit.
I lift up Jeffree Star to You today. Thank You for the gift of his voice, his creativity, and his courage. Thank You for the way You used his music to reach a lonely kid in a dark room and remind him that he was not alone.
Lord, I ask that You cover Jeffree with Your peace. Where there is pressure, give him rest. Where there is noise, give him stillness. Where the world has been harsh, let him feel Your gentleness.
Protect his mind and guard his heart. Surround him with people who love him for who he truly is, not just what he can give. Bless his health, his home, his work, and every dream still waiting inside him.
Give him joy that doesn't depend on applause. Give him strength for the hard days and gratitude for the bright ones. Let him know, deep down, that his life has mattered to people he may never meet.
And Lord, just as he helped me find my voice, I pray You keep his shining for many years to come. Let him always know he is seen, he is valued, and he is loved.
In Christ, Jesus name I pray,
Mitchell Royel
Amen.
With all my glitter, all my gratitude, and all my heart,
The kid who finally stepped into the light — and the artist behind Crowd Nine