Skins＜Colored Vinyl＞

A gift to fans, Skins exists primarily for loyal XXXTentacion devotees. Clocking in at less than 20 minutes, this posthumous collection offers ideas, fleeting emotions, and stream-of-conscious freestyles centered around the swirling darkness within the late rapper. There is a handful of worthwhile nuggets on which to focus, including the woozy "Guardian Angel" and the disturbing "Train Food." "Whoa (Mind in Awe)" comes close to being a fully-realized song -- the lightest and most pop-friendly production on Skins -- but a pair of ragers featuring Travis Barker steal the show. "Staring at the Sky" starts slow with contemplative emo-acoustic guitar strums before exploding into a metallic burst backed by Barker's pounding drums. Like every other song on Skins, it's all-too-brief, but works to great effect. On "One Minute," Kanye West returns to Yeezus territory, utilizing the track to showcase himself atop jagged guitar and Barker's crashing cymbals before XXX joins at the end, almost as an afterthought, with some bloody, hardcore punk-indebted screaming. These unconventional genre hybrids point to an unexplored direction that XXX might have veered toward if he hadn't been killed, but unfortunately this is as far as they go. Skins takes that unrealized potential and cobbles together these tracks -- basically B-sides and outtakes -- strictly for fans who needed just ten more reasons to hear his voice. ~ Neil Z. Yeung

サンクラ世代の寵児としてシーンを駆け上ったXXXテンタシオン。ディストーションの効いた歪みまくったサウンドと挑発的なアティテュードはまるでロックスターとも言うべきで、メロディアスなフックと厭世的な歌詞が特徴の〈エモ・ラップ〉を牽引する存在であった。そんな彼が20歳の若さで銃弾に倒れるとは誰が予想しただろうか。彼がデビュー作『?』の後に発表する予定だった表題を冠したのがこのアルバム。"SAD!"の続編的な"BAD!"を聴くと、彼の不在が嘘のようにも思えるし、カニエが加勢したメタル風味の"One Minute"やXらしいシンプルなメロディーが際立つ"I Don't Let Go"を聴くとさらなる可能性が感じられ、いたたまれない気持ちになるばかりだ。安らかに。
bounce (C)渡辺志保