Skins

The songs are short, not mixed particularly well and--perhaps due to his untimely passing--feel unfinished. Had X been around to see this album all the way through and hash out some of its rushed wrinkles, it has the potential to have been his best project yet. But as it sits right now, Skins renders itself another opportunity for XXXTentacion's cult-like following to continue enjoying new music.

SKINS is another fiery blast of catharsis, a largely metaphor-free space where depression isn't hinted at poetically but invited to throw down. ... There are no songs as refined or showing such potential as ?'s “infinity (888)” and “Moonlight”, and many of them feel like half ideas.

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.

There’s nothing here quite as aurally arresting as Moonlight, off XXX’s ? LP, but his recasting of Slim Shady as an eclectic depressive indelibly coloured this year.

Staring at the Sky is awful, like a snarky parody of a self-pitying grunge track that’s evidently meant in deadly earnest. There are really chilling moments, not least Train Food, with its ominous piano chords and feedback-laden guitar backing given a creepy intimacy. ... And there is stuff that just seems slight, as if its disjointed brevity isn’t always just an aesthetic decision, but occasionally also a way of covering up a scarcity of ideas, a lack of material.

The album never makes a case for X as anything other than a thinly subversive figure and never even rationalizes the baggage that comes saddled with it. X’s musical legacy will forever be interlinked to violence. Skins is merely a shallow attempt to overwrite that legacy gone awry.

Many of the album’s nine songs feel unfinished, with only half managing to crack the two-minute mark.