Aaron Carter's Friend: He Had 'Been Gone' For Some Time Before Death

Aaron Carter was reportedly “gone” long before his death.

His friend and O-Town lead singer, Erik-Michael Estrada, is shedding light on Carter’s behavior prior to his November 5th death.

According to the singer, Carter “distanced himself from everyone” before his untimely passing.

Estrada recently appeared on the “Behind the Velvet Rope” podcast and explained his friend was “gone” for a long time before November 5th.

“The sad part is with Aaron is that he had been gone for quite some time, right? Like, even though he was still here, he wasn’t,” Estrada admitted. “He had distanced himself from everyone, and he made it very clear that he didn’t want anything to do with a lot of people who really cared about him.”

Estrada and Carter came up during the boy-band era and grew to be close friends.

However, their friendship began to breakdown as Carter’s mental health declined and substance abuse increased.

“But he had demons, and he had issues that he was dealing with, and maybe some trauma, and obviously some mental illness,” Estrada shared. “And when you meet someone like that … there were moments where you felt really distant from him. And those were sad.”

The O-Town singer explained how he took Carter aside one time and told him that his talent was “so much better” than the tweets he was putting out.

“I remember having a conversation with him in a bathroom stall … and I’m like, ‘Dude, your talent is so much better than the tweets that you’re putting out, and I just want people to appreciate you for your talent and not these tweets,'” Estrada recalled. “And I could just see the distance in his eyes. I wasn’t really talking to the same guy that I had been talking to the week prior, you know, when we were at a couple of shows before.”

Carter’s longtime manager and friend, Taylor Helgeson, echoed this sentiment in a TikTok tirade aimed at Carter’s ex-fiancée, Melanie Martin.

Carter and Martin first got engaged in June 2020; however, they broke up and got back together multiple times up until his death in November.

They welcomed their son, Prince Carter, in November 2021. The little one celebrated his first birthday at Chuck-E-Cheese, which Martin documented on Instagram.

“You may know her as ‘Melanie’ some people know her as ‘Miss Melanie Martin.’ I know her as ‘crazy a** girl who got kicked off the tour bus who Aaron could not stand, plain and simple,” he continued. “My heart goes out to Prince. I hope he gets well taken care of by Aaron’s family, who I am in close contact with. I feel the say way. End of story. Bye.”

The video ends there… until it continues.

“I’m sorry, I lied. I tried my best. Aaron fell apart on tour? I’m sorry, coming from some Rocky… Rocky… Rocky Balboa s**t whose never met Aaron in person. Aaron fell apart before tour. Aaron called me to bail him out from all you ‘hang around, check the oil, Morgan Mickeson’ whatever his name is… they had him so drugged up out of his G**damn mind he couldn’t function,” Helgeson passionately continued. “And Melanie you’re complicit in that, you’re complicit in that.”

Helgeson went on to explain how he took Aaron on the road to get away from Melanie, but she followed them and “crashed the tour” and tried to “throw yourself off a tour bus moving at 80 miles-per-hour like a psychotic person that you are.”

Once again, Helgeson tried to end his rant against Melanie and all the false reports there, but he just couldn’t help himself.

He urged people to Google information about his and Aaron’s relationship.

“When you want to talk ‘hang arounds,’ go back and say eight-years of pictures of me and Aaron with a healthy face. No f**king face tattoos, looking like a f**king Island Boy… when did that happen? When did that happen? When who came around? When did that happen? It’s common sense. It’s common f**king sense,” Helgeson ranted.

Helgeson has taken the last several weeks to mourn his friend while Martin took to social media soon after news of Carter’s death broke.

“We didn’t lose our careers since Aaron died. I’m good. I lost a friend,” he admitted. “You guys lost your clout. Figure it out.”