Rapper iLoveMakonnen has revealed a posthumous collaboration between Lil Peep and XXXTentacion in an Instagram post. “@lilpeep @xxxtentacion coming ASAP!!!” he wrote, in a caption to a clip in which XXXTentacion is apparently talking about Lil Peep following the latter’s death in 2017.
In the clip, XXXTentacion seems to lament not getting to work with Lil Peep while he was still alive: “If I would have know he was so cool I would have fucked with him sooner. It’s unfortunate because when people die, that’s when you, you know, the remorse makes you check them out.”
“I am honoured to have co written this song that X was inspired to be a part of, shortly before he died,” iLoveMakonnen added in the caption. From the conversation in the accompanying clip, though, it seems that Lil Peep wouldn’t have known anything about XXXTentacion’s involvement.
While the announcement of the collaboration has been received positively – with a fair amount of crossover in the rappers’ fanbases – there has been some controversy about whether it’s what the two artists would have wanted. “Peep never fucked with X and hell even X admitted that him and Peep never got along,” reads one comment on iLoveMakonnen’s Instagram post, while another commenter explained that “people are mad because gus [Lil Peep] openly disliked x.”
Given that Lil Peep hasn’t appeared to have given the go-ahead to feature XXXTentacion on the track prior to his death – unlike his posthumous NOSMOK!NG clothing line, which he’d envisioned beforehand – it is hard to tell whether he would have consented to the collaboration, raising concerns about how an artist’s work is used/manipulated after their death.