About 24 hours before Shifty Shellshock was found dead, the leader of Crazy Town was asking his friends for money.
His manager Howie Hubberman told DailyMail.com that Shifty – whose real name was Seth Binzer – told him he was planning to check into rehab and needed the funds to recover.
In reality, Binzer was renting a room inside a hostel in a drug- and gang-infested area of Koreatown, near downtown Los Angeles.
“He asked me for about $600 and told me he wanted to go to a halfway house,” Hubberman said. “But I knew that in a halfway house he would be out in a day or two because they don’t tolerate anything.”
Howie Hubberman, who represented Seth Binzer for nearly two years, said the musician asked him for money the day before he was found dead in a Los Angeles home.
Hubberman said Binzer “never got clean” and paid between $30 and $50 a night to stay at the Koreatown hostel.
The manager said he stood firm and refused to give the money to his client and friend because he knew Binzer “needed tough love.”
About five months ago, Hubberman said he gave Binzer $300 for a concert in Phoenix, but the singer-rapper never showed up.
“I didn’t give him the $600 he asked for, but someone else did,” Hubberman said. “He took that money and probably some of that money was what ended up killing him. The next day, he was dead.”
Binzer, known by his stage name Shifty Shellshock, told his manager he planned to check into rehab.
Seth Binzer, center, was the frontman for the rap-metal band Crazy Town. The group’s biggest hit was “Butterfly,” released in 2000.
The home’s property manager found Binzer unresponsive on June 24 and called 911. The Crazy Town frontman was lying on a mattress that was placed on the floor of the less than 60-square-foot room he had rented for the past five days.
Emergency services arrived at the house less than four minutes later, but it was too late.
Jason Roberts, who also rented the room in the house, exclusively told DailyMail.com that Binzer was already dead when police entered the house.
The cause and manner of Binzer’s death were “deferred” by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office pending further testing and toxicology results, but Hubberman said his friend died of an accidental overdose.
“It was a combination of prescription drugs, street drugs and whatever he could get his hands on,” Hubberman told DailyMail.com. “Seth was a person with a lot of problems and a lot of issues in his life.”
Binzer was renting a room inside a hostel in a drug- and gang-infested area of Koreatown, near downtown Los Angeles.
Hubberman said Binzer was taking Xanax and Adderall before his death.
DailyMail.com also saw drug paraphernalia in Binzer’s room, including Narcan spray and other injectable medications, left on top of a shelf just above a plastic vanity container.
Although his roommate claimed Binzer was partying with women in his short-term rental room the week of his death, family and friends said this was not true.
Binzer, who has three children, wanted to get sober and was working on new music with plans to get back on the road, his manager said.
But Binzer’s troubled past always haunted him.
“He didn’t like himself,” Hubberman said. “He didn’t like his life, but I think what he disliked most was that he had turned his back on his children because he didn’t know what else to do.”
Shifty Shellshock singing ‘Butterfly’ at Norman Rare Guitars in Tarzana, California
Binzer and his rap-metal band Crazy Town’s biggest hit was 2000’s “Butterfly,” which topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks.
It also reached number one in several other countries, including Austria, Denmark and Norway.
The group’s debut album, The Gift of Game, sold over 1.5 million copies. However, the band disbanded in 2003 after subsequent projects failed and tensions within the group led to several fights.
Hubberman said that during periods when he was sober, Binzer had heart-to-heart conversations about how much he loved his three children and wished he had been a better father.
“As a man and a father, you have to take responsibility for raising your children the way you would have wanted to be raised and making them better people than you were,” Hubberman said. “That was what tormented him the most. He loved those kids and he regretted not being there for them.”
Model Jasmine Lennard, who has a 14-year-old son, Pheonix, with Binzer, told Daily Mail columnist Richard Eden she is “heartbroken” by the death of her former partner.
“She was a troubled soul, but a beautiful one, and she had a heart of gold,” said Lennard, 38. “She battled addiction her entire life. God knows she tried so hard to conquer her demons, but sadly she lost the battle.”
Model Jasmine Lennard with Binzer and their son, Phoenix, now 14.
Binzer also had two other children: Gage, 16, with ex-partner Tracy Shelor and Halo, 22, with ex-wife Melissa Clark.
Clark and Binzer married in 2002 and divorced nine years later, citing irreconcilable differences.
According to a A GoFundMe page has been created for Binzer’s children.The musician sold the rights to his music at the height of his addiction.
“Sadly, the three children are currently not benefiting from their own father’s musical legacy, something we are working to change,” Shelor wrote on the fundraising page.
Binzer was a child of Rock & Roll: his father, Rollin, was a graphic artist, while his mother, Leslie, was a former model.
Growing up in Boston, Binzer told Rolling Stone he used to draw on his father’s stash of drugs and learned how to roll joints when he was just five years old.
“My father was an artistic guy who did a lot of cocaine and had marijuana all over the house,” he told the publication.
Binzer battled his cocaine addiction and even appeared on the reality shows Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew 1 and 2 and Sober House 1 and 2 in the 2000s.
The singer and rapper admitted to having consumed both the drug in powder form and crack.
Binzer had been arrested several times while battling his addiction, but the latest was a DUI in 2022 in Los Angeles.
He was sentenced in April 2023 to 36 months of probation on the condition that he enroll in a rehabilitation program and complete community service, according to court records obtained by DailyMail.com.
Crazy Town members battled drug addiction and arguments before finally breaking up in 2003.
Binzer is the third member of Crazy Town to die young.
The former bandmates battled drug abuse, addiction and domestic violence in the years after the band disbanded in 2003.
In March 2004, guitarist Rust Epique, whose real name was Charles Anthony Lopez, was found dead in his Las Vegas home, apparently due to a heart attack. He was 36 years old.
Five years later, another bandmate, Adam Goldstein, known by his stage name DJ AM, also died at age 36 from an accidental drug overdose.
Hubberman said that despite the incredible loss Binzer had suffered in his life, the singer and rapper wanted to get his career back on track.
The manager said Binzer had recorded enough unreleased songs for a new album.
“In the end, he let the drugs get him to where he was and he didn’t know how to fix it,” Hubberman said. “This went on for decades. We all tried to help him, but in the end we all failed.”
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