Bad Vibes Forever
Bad Vibes Forever is the fourth and final studio album by American rapper XXXTentacion. It is his second posthumous solo album and his last album following his death on June 18, 2018. The album was released on December 6, 2019, and features guest appearances from Lil Wayne, Blink-182, Tory Lanez, Stefflon Don, Mavado, Ky-Mani Marley, Rick Ross, Vybz Kartel and others.
"Royalty" was released on July 19, 2019, as Bad Vibes Forever
Background
Bad Vibes Forever was initially planned as XXXTENTACION's debut album, with a slated release date of October 31, 2016. In a March 2017 interview, XXXTENTACION stated he was working on Bad Vibes Forever alongside 17. 17 was released as his debut album in August 2017, followed by the EP A Ghetto Christmas Carol in December. That same month, XXXTentacion announced that his next three albums would be titled ?, Skins, and Bad Vibes Forever.XXXTentacion's second studio album ? was released in March 2018, the last project he released before being murdered in June 2018. His first posthumous album, Skins, was released in December 2018. On the anniversary of his murder, his estate announced an upcoming album and documentary planned for the year. Billboard confirmed the album's title as Bad Vibes Forever in August 2019, with a slated release for fall 2019. The album was reported to feature guest appearances from Stefflon Don, Lil Wayne, Lil Nas X, Trippie Redd, Rick Ross, Joey Badass and more. However, the song featuring Lil Nas X would later be scrapped; stating that the fans didn't want it at first, it was because of one of Lil Nas X's tweets from his old Twitter account. But it was resolved, right around the corner from the release of the album. On August 25, 2019, the songs "Hearteater" and "School Shooters " were confirmed for the album.
On November 12, 2019, a teaser for the album and XXXTentacion's clothing line, also titled Bad Vibes Forever, was released through his Instagram story. In the video, the album title was referred to as Bad Vibes Forever, Vol. 1 and presented as "the final album".
On November 20, 2019, the album's cover art was teased on social media by XXXTentacion's mother who stated that the album, back to being referred to as Bad Vibes Forever, would be "coming soon". A followup album trailer revealed the release date for December 6, 2019.
Promotion
"Royalty", featuring Ky-Mani Marley, Stefflon Don and Vybz Kartel, was released on July 19, 2019, as the album's lead single."Hearteater", originally a scrapped track from ?, was teased on October 18, 2019, with a picture of XXXTentacion's ex-girlfriend, Geneva Ayala, eating a bloody heart. The single was officially released on October 22, 2019. A music video for the track was also announced, and features Ayala, who had previously accused the rapper of domestic abuse. The music video was released on October 25, 2019.
The album's title track, featuring Trippie Redd and PnB Rock, was released on November 22, 2019, following a teaser video released the day before. The teaser video showed the two artists, as well as Billie Eilish and Lil Skies, recounting the impact XXXTentacion had on their lives, with Eilish referring to the artist as "a beam of light tried to do everything for other people".
Critical reception
The album was met with mixed reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 55, based on six reviews. Kyann-Sian Williams, writing for NME, called the album "better than last year's Skins but still "a case of diminishing returns" and "a serious case of over-embellishing thin material".Commercial performance
Bad Vibes Forever debuted at number five on the US Billboard 200 with 65,000 album-equivalent units.Track listing
Track listing adapted from Tidal.Notes
- "Introduction", "Bad Vibes Forever", "Before I Realize", "The Interlude That Never Ends", "Won't Grow Old ", and "Numb the Pain" are stylized in all lowercase.
- "Ugly", "Limbo", "The Only Time I Feel Alive", "Attention!", "Hearteater", and "It's All Fading to Black" are stylized in all caps.
- "Chase / Glass Shards" is stylized as "CHASE / glass shards".
- "Daemons" is a remix of an earlier XXXTentacion song which was titled "Who The Fuck is God?" and originally featured J Soul.
- "Ecstasy" is a reproduction of an earlier XXXTentacion song of the same name.
- "Voss" is a re-release with different credentials. It was Sauce Walka's "Voss featuring XXXTentacion". and was on his album Drip God. Carnage only took producer credits.
- "Northstar " is a remix of an earlier XXXTentacion song named Shining Like The Northstar and has a new beat from Mally Mall.
Personnel
- XXXTentacion - vocals, production, executive production, composition
- PnB Rock - vocals, composition
- Cleopatra Bernard - executive producer
- Carnage - composer
- Mavado - composer
- Brandon Brown - mixing assistant
- Johann Chavez - engineer
- Gary Clark - mixing assistant
- JonFX - composer
- John Cunningham - bass, composer, drums, engineer, guitar, mixing, percussion, piano, producer, programming, string arrangements, synthesizer, vocal producer
- Noah Cyrus - featured artist
- Brian Eisner - engineer
- XXYYXX - composer, engineer
- Tom G - featured artist
- Isiah Gage - strings
- Dylan Getz - design, packaging
- Thomas L. Godbolt - composer
- Viva Goings - mixing assistant
- Koen Heldens - mixing
- Billy Hickey - engineer
- Mark Hoppus - composer
- Josh Humber - composer
- Ronny J - composer
- Kemba - engineer, featured artist
- Joey Badass - featured artist
- Paul Judge - composer, producer
- Ted Kay - composer
- Killstation - featured artist, mixing, producer
- Dave Kutch - mastering
- Tory Lanez - featured artist
- Jimmy Levy - composer, featured artist
- Lil Wayne - composer, featured artist
- Rico Love - vocal producer
- Joyner Lucas - featured artist
- Mally Mall - producer
- Matt Malpass - engineer
- Ky-Mani Marley - composer, featured artist
- Sauce Miyagi - engineer, mixing
- Sergio Montoya - design, packaging
- Duong Nyugen - design, packaging
- Robbie Owens-Russo - design, packaging
- Vybz Kartel - composer
- Juan "Saucy" Pena - engineer
- Kevin Peterson - mastering assistant
- Chris Quock - mixing assistant
- John Rodriguez - composer
- Rick Ross - featured artist
- Kristina Santa - assistant engineer
- Sauce Walka - composer, featured artist
- Ikabod Veins - composer, featured artist
- Jasper Sheff - composer, keyboards, producer
- Alexander "Smitty" Smith - engineer
- Solomon "Sounds" Sobande - management
- Cheng Sok - design packaging
- Robbie Soukiasyan - composer, drums, engineer, guitar, mixing, producer, string arrangements, string engineer
- Stefflon Don - featured artist
- Yang Tan - engineer
- Jorge Tavares - engineer
- Trippie Redd - featured artist
- Cool & Dre - composer
- Anneka Warburton - composer
- Craig Xen - composer, featured artist
- Gerard Yusuf - engineer
- Oscar Zayas - engineer
Charts