Shifty Shellshock’s manager reveals Crazy Town star’s disturbing final request before dying of overdose

About 24 hours before Shifty Shellshock was found dead, the Crazy Town frontman begged his friends for money.

His manager, Howie Hubberman, told DailyMail.com that Shifty, whose real name was Seth Binzer, was planning to go to a shelter and needed the money to get back on his own two feet.

In reality, Binzer rented a room in a boarding house in a drug- and gang-ridden section of Koreatown, near Downtown Los Angeles.

“He wanted about $600 and told me he wanted to go to a sober living house,” Hubberman said. “But he knew that in a sober living house he would be gone in a day or two because they don’t tolerate anything.”

Hubberman said Binzer “never came clean” and that he paid about $30 to $50 a night to stay at the Koreatown guesthouse.

The manager said he held his ground and refused to give his client and friend the money because he knew Binzer “needed a firm hand.”

About five months ago, Hubberman said he paid Binzer $300 to perform 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 ultimately killed him. The next day he was dead.”

Binzer, 49, was found unconscious on June 24 by the homeowner, who called 911. The Crazy Town singer was lying on a mattress on the floor of the less than 60-square-foot (5.5-square-meter) room he had been renting for the past five days.

Less than four minutes later, emergency services arrived at the home, but it was too late.

Jason Roberts, who also rented a room in the house, told DailyMail.com exclusively that Binzer was already dead when police entered the home.

The Los Angeles County coroner has deferred the cause and severity of death pending further tests and toxicology results, but Hubberman said his friend died of an accidental overdose.

“It was a combination of prescription drugs, narcotics and anything he could get his hands on,” Hubberman told DailyMail.com. “Seth was a person with a lot of ailments and problems in his life.”

Hubberman said Binzer was using Xanax and Adderall before his death.

DailyMail.com also saw drug-related paraphernalia in Binzer’s room, including a Narcan spray and other injectable medications, left on a shelf just above a plastic dresser.

His roommate claimed that Binzer had been partying with women at his room rental business the week after his death, but his family and friends said this was not true.

Binzer, who has three children, wanted to quit drinking and was working on new music to get back on the road. His manager was sad.

But Binzer’s troubled past continued to haunt him.

“He didn’t like himself,” Hubberman said. “He didn’t like his life, but I think the worst thing he really didn’t like was how he turned his back on his children because he didn’t know what else to do.”

Binzer and his rap-metal band Crazy Town’s biggest hit was “Butterfly” in 2000, which spent two weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

The song 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 split in 2003 after their subsequent projects failed and tensions within the group led to several fights.

Hubberman said that during periods of sobriety, Binzer had candid conversations about how much he loved his three sons and how much he wished he had been a better father.

“As a man and a father, you have to take responsibility and raise your children the way you would want to be raised and make them a better person than you are,” Hubberman said. “That was the biggest thing that haunted him. He loved those children and he regretted not being there for them.”

Model Jasmine Lennard, who has a 14-year-old son, Pheonix, with Binzer, told Ny Breaking columnist Richard Eden she was “heartbroken” following the death of her ex-partner.

“He was a troubled soul, but a beautiful one and he had a heart of gold,” said Lennard, 38. “He struggled with addiction his whole life. God knows he tried so hard to beat his demons, but unfortunately he lost his battle.”

Binzer also had two other children: Gage, 16, with his ex-partner Tracy Shelor and Halo, 22, with his ex-wife Melissa Clark.

Clark and Binzer married in 2002 and divorced nine years later, citing irreconcilable differences.

According to a GoFundMe page started for Binzer’s childrenthe musician sold the rights to his music at the height of his addiction.

“It’s sad that the three boys are currently not benefiting from their own father’s musical legacy. We are working to change that,” Shelor wrote on the fundraising page.

Shelor added, “Seth loved his boys more than anything. He tragically battled addiction his entire life, which often prevented him from providing for his children the way he wanted to. Despite this, his dedication to his music and his fans never wavered, even to the very end.”

Binzer was a rock ‘n’ roll love child: his father, Rollin, was a graphic artist and his mother Leslie was a former model.

While growing up in Boston, Binzer told Rolling Stone that he helped himself to his father’s drug supply and learned to roll joints at age 5.

“My dad was an artistic kid who did a lot of cocaine and had weed lying around the house,” he told the publication.

Binzer struggled with his cocaine addiction and even appeared on reality TV shows Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew 1 and 2 and Sober House 1 and 2 in the 2000s.

The singer-rapper admitted to using both the powder form of the drug and crack cocaine.

Binzer has been arrested several times for his addiction, but the last time was for drunk driving in 2022 in Los Angeles.

In April 2023, he was sentenced to 36 months of probation, on the condition that he enroll in a rehabilitation program and perform community service, according to court documents obtained by DailyMail.com.

Binzer is the third member of Crazy Town to die young.

The former band members struggled with drug abuse, addiction and domestic violence after the band broke up in 2003.

In March 2004, guitarist Rust Epique—real name Charles Anthony Lopez—was found dead in his Las Vegas home of a suspected heart attack. He was 36 years old.

Five years later, another band member, Adam Goldstein – better known by his stage name DJ AM – also died at the age of 36 from an accidental drug overdose.

Hubberman said that despite the tremendous loss he had suffered in his life, Binzer wanted to get his career back on track.

The manager said Binzer had recorded enough unreleased songs for a new album.

“He ultimately let the drugs lead him to where he was and he didn’t know how to correct it,” Hubberman said. “This went on for decades. We all tried to help him, but ultimately we all failed.”