When D4vd’s “Romantic Homicide” went viral on TikTok in 2022, peaking at No. 4 on Billboard’s Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart, the bedroom-pop singer seemed unstoppable. The Houston-born artist had signed with Interscope Records, released critically-praised EPs, and by April 2025, dropped his debut album Withered—a project that should have launched him into the mainstream. Instead, it marked the beginning of the end. Now, the same label that bet on him is quietly erasing him from existence.
Late last year, Interscope Records quietly dropped D4vd from its label—roughly eight months before he was charged with first-degree murder, lewd and lascivious acts with a person under 14 and mutilating a body. The timeline here is crucial: Interscope wasn’t responding to headlines. They were responding to an investigation that had already zeroed in on David Anthony Burke, whose real name finally matters in this story.
Rivas was last seen alive going into Burke’s Los Angeles home in late April 2025—the same month his debut album dropped. By September 2025, the decomposed and dismembered remains of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez were discovered in the trunk of Burke’s Tesla, which had been towed after being reported abandoned in the Hollywood Hills. Prosecutors would later allege that he killed her for financial gain “to maintain his very lucrative musical career that Celeste was threatening” to expose.
What Interscope knew and when they knew it remains unclear. The label moved fast, though. After police began looking at Burke as a suspect, the record label quietly dropped Burke sometime last year. No press release. No explanation. Just gone—scrubbed from the website, removed from promotional materials, the digital equivalent of “this conversation never happened.” When Burke was arrested in April 2026, Universal Music Group helped some of its artists who have collaborated with D4vd remove their songs from streaming platforms. D4vd’s collaborations with Kali Uchis, Laufey, and Holly Humberstone have been removed from music platforms; Damiano David, who had featured Burke on his song “Tangerine,” replaced the song with a solo version.
The culture has seen label scrambles before—but rarely has the machinery worked this fast. Interscope didn’t wait for a guilty verdict. They didn’t even wait for an arrest. They read the room, read the investigation, and got out. The only artist who slipped through: The Kid Laroi, whose 2023 song “THE LINE” remains on major streaming platforms with D4vd’s feature still intact. The contrast is telling—some suits moved; others didn’t.
Burke has pleaded not guilty, and his attorneys maintain his innocence, saying, “The actual evidence in this case will show that David Burke did not murder Celeste Rivas Hernandez and he was not the cause of her death.” But from the industry’s perspective, the verdict came early. One TikTok hit, two EPs, one album, a few months of rising momentum—and then the label’s confidence evaporated, months before the public even knew why.
The 16BARS take: Interscope saw this coming before the world did. They didn’t drop a rising artist over rumors—they dropped him because they’d glimpsed what the evidence looked like. That’s not corporate PR flexibility; that’s institutional knowledge of a situation too dark to bet on. The quiet exit is the story.
