Hear Lil Peep, iLoveMakonnen’s Melancholy Singalong ‘Sunlight On Your Skin’

Lil Peep died November at age 21 of a drug overdose, but the emo rapper left behind lots of music. Columbia Records is reportedly preparing an entire album of his vaulted work. Last week, the label released “Falling Down,” a collaboration with the late rapper XXXTentacion. Now, an early, rawer version of that song has been released: “Sunlight On Your Skin.”

Peep wrote the song with iLoveMakonnen, who told XXL that the song came out of a rainy, boring off-day in London. “My manager called me … and was asking what we were doing. And it was like, ‘Nothing, it’s raining. You know we’re just chillin.’ And he’s like, ‘Okay, well go write a song about the rain.’ And so were like, ‘Okay, let’s go do that’ and me and Lil Peep started working on that.”

Those who were close to Peep seem happier to see this original version of the song released rather than the XXXTentacion collaboration.  XXXTentacion recorded his vocals on “Falling Down” after Peep’s death (and before XXXXTentacion was shot and killed at age in Florida in June). Some members of Peep’s crew GothBoiClique have said that Peep would have objected to being featured on a track with XXXTentacion: “[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.”

Peep’s mother, Liza Womack, struck a more diplomatic tone: “I look forward to releasing Gus’s original work, and to hearing how other musical artists take inspiration from songs, here and there, and re-work them to create new pieces of music,” Womack wrote. “It will be interesting to listen to the different versions. We will each have our own favorites. And that is okay.”