XXXTentacion’s ‘Skins’ Doesn’t Live up to the Hype

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Sam Lance, Co-editor-and-chief

XXXTentacion’s 10 track, posthumous album Skins was released last Friday. The album was the first release since XXXTentacion’s tragic death on June 19.

Skins follows X’s most popular album ? from earlier this year, which featured a No. 1 track, “Sad!”

It took only 24 hours for Skins to reach 100 million streams on Spotify, and the albums hit single “Bad!” is currently No. 8 on the Apple Music charts.

Overall, Skins was not one of my favorites. Most tracks feature X’s other styles like screamo and depression rap, rather than his usual soft trap songs. When listening for the first time, the album didn’t flow well song to song because of the mixing of styles.

The song “Woah,” however, feautured the old X that I enjoy. The beat goes well with X’s vocals and it creates a vibe unlike any other song on the album. The track currently sits at No. 14 on the Apple Music charts.

“I love the background music,” freshman Delaney Kuhns said. “‘Woah’ is definitely my favorite song on the album.”

Other tracks like “Train food” and “Difference” are great listens if you’re in a relaxed state of mind.

What has really been the tipping point of the album to some people are tracks “Staring at the Sky” and “One Minute,” which are heavy screamo songs. However, senior Joe Copeland doesn’t mind it.

“It really shows X’s diversity as an artist,” he said. “I don’t mind the screamo.”

For an album released after X’s death, the album is what it is— a last attempt to get X’s music to his fans.

“It’s honestly really hard to process that X music might be done,” senior Jonathon Yancik said. “It’ll be hard to realize that this is probably the last body of work he had for us.”