This is a post I'm not particularly inclined to write; I've said all I have to say across disparate platforms. The urgency of my desire to have all such thoughts compiled in a single, citable place overrides my lack of enthusiasm. (By the way, if my language and syntax is slightly over-formal, please excuse me - I've been binge-reading Waverley by Sir Walter Scott and, like Waverley himself, am very impressionable, and this extends to my tone.
I would like to say that, if I'm biased, I'm biased in the best possible way: biased against homophobia, domestic abuse; biased towards inclusivity and innovation with regards to social norms.
Context
I fear that what I have to say in this field is neither revolutionary nor educational for those acquainted with the situation, but, for the sake of thoroughness, I will explain.
A few months before his death, Lil Peep came out as bisexual, through these infamous tweets:
After this, in London, Peep was seen hanging out with Makonnen a lot, being very touchy and all that. People were speculating, some in a very queerphobic way:
It's pretty much accepted that they were dating now. I can't find it now, but Mak posted a photo of Peep achieving something (post-humously), with the caption "that's my boyfriend!".
Peep and Makonnen have/had an entire album they'd made:
One of the songs in that album is presumed to be "Sunlight on Your Skin", which has been leaked for a good while. Notably, it had a gritty, lo-fi, but summery feeling to it:
The song is basically a love song and/or a duet between iLoveMakonnen and Lil Peep: Peep sings, "'Ko [short for Makonnen] let's watch the rain as it's falling down / sunlight on your skin when I'm not around", and Makonnen replies, "what do I have to prove to you / to be your one and only guy?" As such, it cements and affirms a same-sex rap relationship - very rare, as you can imagine.
Now, let's talk about XXXTENTACION for a while. I must confess, I don't know as much about X, and don't really care for him. What I do know is that he too is a member of the emo trap genre, and has an extremely loyal fanbase. He was an infamous rapper to begin with, notorious for his criminal background and violent mis-handlings. The archetypal example here, of course, is his beating of his (possibly pregnant) ex-girlfriend. Here are the gruesome details.
There's also the fact of his homophobia. This article talks about it, along with a more in-detail history of his domestic violence. For good measure, have some colourism:
This may strike you as obvious, but Peep did not like X. In fact, according to fish narc, “[Peep] explicitly rejected XXX for his abuse of women, spent time and money getting XXX’s songs removed from his Spotify playlists, and wouldn’t have co-signed that song. Don’t listen to it." (This was posted on fish's Insta story). He said this after it was revealed that "Sunlight on Your Skin" would be released as "Falling Down", with Makonnen's verses replaced with a verse by X, who had only come to respect Peep after his death, heard the song, and asked to be on it. (Reminds me of a bratty six-year-old demanding to play with two other kids who are having fun with a toy).
Peep's mum and brother were also very upset with the "collaboration". His brother Oskar had an outburst on instagram spanning several posts, saying things along the line of "stop messing with my brother's music", and ending with him deleting his instagram account. This was Peep's mum Liza's response to the news:
She was copping some of the blame, because she had sold the rights to Peep's music to Columbia Records, meaning that they could do what they want with it. Apparently, Makonnen approved of it, which is what allowed it to happen.
Some friends close to Peep like Fat Nick (who I don't really trust anyway; he's a rapist apparently) have since claimed that Peep and X were 'coming round' to each other, and that there were plans for them to meet at X's house after the tour that Peep didn't end up finishing.
The things X says on the track don't seem to match that claim though: "I feel hella shitty because it's like... if I would have known he was so cool and... if I had watched interviews sooner, bro, we were so alike... It's unfortunate because it's like... when people die, that's when we like 'em, yknow? The remorse kinda makes you check them out."
I think it's obvious what my stance is here. It's heartbreaking that a queer rap song was irreparably altered into a song that would financially support the estate of a homophobic domestic abuser. The irony stings. And while it is true that the original was released a couple of weeks after, timing was very important - Falling Down vastly overshadowed Sunlight on Your Skin. As of right now, Falling Down has 51.3 million views, and Sunlight on Your Skin has 3.3 million. I acknowledge that Falling Down also had a lot more attention on it because of the romance of the two exalted dead rappers collaborating on an eerie track, which probably drew lots of 'locals' in (in fact, Ethan Dolan posted a screenshot of the song on his story, and Emma Chamberlain added it to her Fall spotify playlist), but I definitely think timing was a factor. I guess we'll never know.
Content
I'm just going to put both tracks here so we're all on the same page.
The two songs have quite distinct tones. "Falling Down" is far more melancholy, both as a result of its backdrop of tragic death twice over, the regret and wistfulness conveyed in X's voiceovers, and the broken minor chords X sings throughout ("ooh ooh ooh"), which mix with the burst of Peep's chorus. "Sunlight on Your Skin" is a little more upbeat in that it is happy-sad. It's about love and the wistfulness of distance. These tone differences are reflected in their titles.
My biggest qualm with the content of "Falling Down" is that Peep and X's verses don't match. Sure, they kind of go together melodically or whatever (it's been a long time since my last music theory exam), but lyrically, there's a total mismatch. First of all, Peep's singing to "Ko" (even though in the official lyrics, they were changed to "come"), and X is just in his own little world singing about some girl I guess (did he beat her too? Is that what the "bed of nails" is?).
I would like to say that, if I'm biased, I'm biased in the best possible way: biased against homophobia, domestic abuse; biased towards inclusivity and innovation with regards to social norms.
Context
I fear that what I have to say in this field is neither revolutionary nor educational for those acquainted with the situation, but, for the sake of thoroughness, I will explain.
A few months before his death, Lil Peep came out as bisexual, through these infamous tweets:
After this, in London, Peep was seen hanging out with Makonnen a lot, being very touchy and all that. People were speculating, some in a very queerphobic way:
It's pretty much accepted that they were dating now. I can't find it now, but Mak posted a photo of Peep achieving something (post-humously), with the caption "that's my boyfriend!".
Peep and Makonnen have/had an entire album they'd made:
 |
| (Eerily, he tweeted this on the day of his death.) |
One of the songs in that album is presumed to be "Sunlight on Your Skin", which has been leaked for a good while. Notably, it had a gritty, lo-fi, but summery feeling to it:
The song is basically a love song and/or a duet between iLoveMakonnen and Lil Peep: Peep sings, "'Ko [short for Makonnen] let's watch the rain as it's falling down / sunlight on your skin when I'm not around", and Makonnen replies, "what do I have to prove to you / to be your one and only guy?" As such, it cements and affirms a same-sex rap relationship - very rare, as you can imagine.
Now, let's talk about XXXTENTACION for a while. I must confess, I don't know as much about X, and don't really care for him. What I do know is that he too is a member of the emo trap genre, and has an extremely loyal fanbase. He was an infamous rapper to begin with, notorious for his criminal background and violent mis-handlings. The archetypal example here, of course, is his beating of his (possibly pregnant) ex-girlfriend. Here are the gruesome details.
There's also the fact of his homophobia. This article talks about it, along with a more in-detail history of his domestic violence. For good measure, have some colourism:
This may strike you as obvious, but Peep did not like X. In fact, according to fish narc, “[Peep] explicitly rejected XXX for his abuse of women, spent time and money getting XXX’s songs removed from his Spotify playlists, and wouldn’t have co-signed that song. Don’t listen to it." (This was posted on fish's Insta story). He said this after it was revealed that "Sunlight on Your Skin" would be released as "Falling Down", with Makonnen's verses replaced with a verse by X, who had only come to respect Peep after his death, heard the song, and asked to be on it. (Reminds me of a bratty six-year-old demanding to play with two other kids who are having fun with a toy).
Peep's mum and brother were also very upset with the "collaboration". His brother Oskar had an outburst on instagram spanning several posts, saying things along the line of "stop messing with my brother's music", and ending with him deleting his instagram account. This was Peep's mum Liza's response to the news:
She was copping some of the blame, because she had sold the rights to Peep's music to Columbia Records, meaning that they could do what they want with it. Apparently, Makonnen approved of it, which is what allowed it to happen.
Some friends close to Peep like Fat Nick (who I don't really trust anyway; he's a rapist apparently) have since claimed that Peep and X were 'coming round' to each other, and that there were plans for them to meet at X's house after the tour that Peep didn't end up finishing.
The things X says on the track don't seem to match that claim though: "I feel hella shitty because it's like... if I would have known he was so cool and... if I had watched interviews sooner, bro, we were so alike... It's unfortunate because it's like... when people die, that's when we like 'em, yknow? The remorse kinda makes you check them out."
I think it's obvious what my stance is here. It's heartbreaking that a queer rap song was irreparably altered into a song that would financially support the estate of a homophobic domestic abuser. The irony stings. And while it is true that the original was released a couple of weeks after, timing was very important - Falling Down vastly overshadowed Sunlight on Your Skin. As of right now, Falling Down has 51.3 million views, and Sunlight on Your Skin has 3.3 million. I acknowledge that Falling Down also had a lot more attention on it because of the romance of the two exalted dead rappers collaborating on an eerie track, which probably drew lots of 'locals' in (in fact, Ethan Dolan posted a screenshot of the song on his story, and Emma Chamberlain added it to her Fall spotify playlist), but I definitely think timing was a factor. I guess we'll never know.
Content
I'm just going to put both tracks here so we're all on the same page.
The two songs have quite distinct tones. "Falling Down" is far more melancholy, both as a result of its backdrop of tragic death twice over, the regret and wistfulness conveyed in X's voiceovers, and the broken minor chords X sings throughout ("ooh ooh ooh"), which mix with the burst of Peep's chorus. "Sunlight on Your Skin" is a little more upbeat in that it is happy-sad. It's about love and the wistfulness of distance. These tone differences are reflected in their titles.
My biggest qualm with the content of "Falling Down" is that Peep and X's verses don't match. Sure, they kind of go together melodically or whatever (it's been a long time since my last music theory exam), but lyrically, there's a total mismatch. First of all, Peep's singing to "Ko" (even though in the official lyrics, they were changed to "come"), and X is just in his own little world singing about some girl I guess (did he beat her too? Is that what the "bed of nails" is?).
Let's look at Peep's lines first. "Sunlight on your skin when I'm not around / Shit don't feel the same when you're out of town / So, 'Ko/come let's watch the rain as it's falling down." This is Makonnen's explanation: "Rainy days when you’re together but sunny days when you’re apart, you love each other so much that you would rather spend the rainy days together than to have the sunny days alone, even though the sunny weather is preferred by most. So it’s like we will stay together all these rainy days and I’m with you until the weather changes, because the love is that strong." So the rain is a symbol of enduring love (as cheesy as it is).
In contrast, X's verse, in its entirety, is "Rain keeps falling tears keep falling / Rain keeps falling tears keep falling / Darling, your love is like walking on a bed of nails / And I just can't keep falling for you / Ooh ooh ooh". Here, rain is a much simpler symbol of pain and an unstable, unhealthy relationship. These two symbolisms obvious clash in a way that isn't acknowledged. This is passed over, however, because of the desperately romantic context of the song - two dead legends together on a post-humous track.
I don't think I really have to go into Mak's verses, because it doesn't require much analysis to show that Makonnen is matching Peep's tone and singing back to him - they wrote the song together.
One last comment: I could be totally wrong about this, but the haunting "ooh ooh ooh" broken ascending chord of X's kind of parallels the broken descending chord of Makonnen's "gu-u-uy". Is this a coincidence? Is it homage? Is it unoriginality? Am I talking shit? I guess we'll never know.
Another interesting factor to note is that many fans were disappointed by the studio-released version of "Sunlight on Your Skin", preferring the leaked version. This seems to mostly be due to the lo-fi, gritty, home-made, simple quality of the leaked version which suits what Peep and Makonnen are expressing in their simple lyrics.
I'm also going to include a great comment that I found on instagram:
What they write is beyond the scope of my musical knowledge, so assess their claim for yourselves.
I don't know how to end this. Perhaps abruptly, to reflect the injustice of the situation.
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