Crazy Town's frontman, Seth Binzer, passes away at the age of 49.

 The Los Angeles band, which Binzer co-founded in 1995, achieved worldwide success with their 2000 single Butterfly.

Seth Binzer, AKA Shifty Shellshock, of Crazy Town. Photograph: Markus Cuff/Corbis/Getty Images

Lead vocalist Seth Binzer of the Los Angeles rap-rock group Crazy Town, who achieved a US No. 1 hit with Butterfly in 2001, passed away at the age of 49. While confirming that his death occurred on June 24, 2024, the Los Angeles medical examiner did not provide a reason.

Along with Bret Mazur, Binzer—also referred to as Shifty Shellshock—founded Crazy Town in 1995. The Gift of the Game, the band's debut album, was released in 1999.

At first, it wasn't successful; two of the singles didn't make the charts. The band's future appeared bleak, especially after they pulled out of the 2000 tour of Ozzfest after Binzer was arrested for hurling a chair out of a window while intoxicated.

But they also released a third song, Butterfly, in the fall of 2000, with a sample from Red Hot Chili Peppers' Pretty Little Ditty, which they had previously toured with. The song reached at No. 3 in the UK before climbing the US charts to No. 1 the following year.

The band claimed that because they knew the song would come to define them, they had been reluctant to release it as the first single from the album. "A song like Butterfly is a no-brainer; no matter how hard they try, everyone seems to love it, it's very radio friendly, the female audience loves it, and at the same time, I think we kept our integrity with it," stated Binzer.

They had assumed correctly: Binzer told Rolling Stone that the band had "a lot to prove" because of the single, i.e., that they were "aggressive punk kids – a real band and not a pop act," when they toured with Ozzfest in 2001. However, MTV stated that they were regarded as "the Butterfly boys" and garnered conflicting reviews.

Their second album, Darkhorse, was released in 2002, but it did not achieve the same success. As a result, the band took a break from 2003 until 2007.

Binzer and Paul Oakenfold worked together on the song Starry Eyed Surprise in 2002. Happy Love Sick, his solo album, was released in 2004 under the pseudonym Shifty Shellshock.

The band broke up in 2007, and a year later, Binzer took part in a follow-up program called Sober House and the VH1 reality show Celebrity Rehab, where he relapsed.

Their third album, The Brimstone Sluggers, was released in 2015, although it was not a chart-topper. The band was renamed Crazy Town X by Binzer, who continued to play with them until 2023 after Mazur quit in 2017. After a brawl between Bobby Reeves and Binzer, the frontman of nu metal band Hed PE, the band was asked to leave their tour that year.

Leslie Brooks, a former model, and Rollin Binzer, the director of the 1974 concert film Ladies and Gentlemen: the Rolling Stones, were the couple that gave birth to Binzer. Raised in Boston and LA, he traveled to New York City to purchase cassette tapes and fell in love with the city's skateboarding culture. It was there that he first heard about rap.

As a young man, Binzer had been arrested for assault with a handgun, selling and using narcotics, and battling addiction. He was transparent about these experiences.

His engagement to British model Jasmine Lennard was marred by drug and violence claims at the beginning of the 2010s. He was taken into custody in Los Angeles in 2022 for driving while intoxicated.

Binzer's passing comes after those of former Crazy Town members DJ AM in 2009 and Rust Epique in 2004.