Review Summary: Bad Vibes Forever is the disappointing end to xxxtentacion's musical career. Almost irredeemable from back to front, it is an example of an artists death being used purely for monetary reasons.
Bad Vibes Forever is what I imagine people who hate X's music think it sounds like all the time.
Every X review needs to begin with a lengthy rant about how you are an X fan but I'm not going to going on about it. However I will say I absolutely loved his music all the way up until his untimely death last year. X's labels Empire & Capitol Music Group has continued to release music posthumously under X's name. I say that because since the man died, the soul has been ripped out of his music and the projects released hardly feel like authentic X albums at all. Essentially X has been turned into a brand by corporate suits who have to scrounge up every last penny and leftover vocal sample from X's name as they can. After all, they invested tens of millions into this young man who died before he could make the label that money back. Bad Vibes Forever is as soulless as X music gets and it's not an intentional stylistic choice from the production team. His penultimate release SKINS from December of last year was unfinished and average at best which was a clear sign that there was a lack of quality material in X's back catalogue. Unsurprisingly, Bad Vibes Forever is even less finished and more underwhelming than SKINS.
Bad Vibes Forever isn't really a rap album. There are certainly elements of hip-hop music in most songs on the track list but there are a variety of genres unconvincingly packed into this hour long project. It's more of a folk/emo/metal-rap fusion, a sort of melting pot where the producers are just throwing together whatever they can. I hate to be trashing the album already but it's blatantly obvious that there wasn't enough material to make another X album and that the material that is here isn't very good.
The album starts off with a spoken word or recording of X speaking about how he just wants to be himself and move on from his "mistakes". I won't delve into X's legal troubles in this review as I am reviewing the music, not his controversies or X as an individual. It isn't a song but it was kind of interesting, although it does seem a little manufactured when you consider the context in which this album was released. However it's at least semi interesting to listen to. The first actual song is Ex Bitch which is one of the best sounding songs on the album but it is admittedly extremely cringey at least in my opinion. The constant alternating use of the word daddy in a sexual and nonsexual, literal way is very weird. After the awkwardness of that musical moment wears off, so does the song. This is a problem that you see with almost every track on this album. The song ideas are loosely strung together by leftover vocal samples, features, multiple producers and the result is a collection of songs that never go anywhere. Songs either begin well and taper off after the thirty second mark or barely have a beginning, middle or end at all. There's no cohesion in the album from one song to the next and even within the individual songs themselves. Ex Bitch like many other songs on here devolves into a looped vocal snippet over a rudimentary guitar instrumental. It fails to keep your attention for the song's entirety despite the fact it's only two minutes long. However it is one of the better songs on the album.
I won't go into this much detail with every track on the album as most of them suffer from the same problems as each other and subsequently fade into the background from not being noteworthy. Instead I'll just briefly outline the issues this album has, as I struggle to come up with any positive things to say about Bad Vibes Forever. (side note; the sad thing is there's unlikable elements to every track. not one song is solid all the way through and I wouldn't consider any of the twenty-five songs on here good ;end side note)
Naturally as X is no longer alive, he had no say over the creative process of constructing these vocal snippets into songs and predictably there's little to none of his personality in Bad Vibes Forever. There are moments where you do hear X singing in a goofy voice (Voss, The Only Time I Feel Alive and many more) which is in line with how he used to perform some songs while alive, but the performances sound almost intentionally bad. It mostly sounds like X playing around, not taking himself seriously and improvising throwaway verses for fun. It's also very likely a lot of the vocals are old besides from 2016 to early 2018 which explains why they're lacking in quality.
Bad Vibes Forever has X at his absolute worst to date. His verse on the song Daemons is the worst he's ever laid down. His flow lacks confidence and lyrically it's just word salad with needlessly satanic statements about murdering god, feeding his organs to the children, inexplicably drowning women/children and pointless biblical imagery. It's the type of verse that immediately stands out as particularly awful. the interlude that never ends is another noticeably bad cut that serves no purpose in the track list. A somber piano loops constantly over these inebriated, slurred vocals, soaked in reverb that also begin to loop after thirty seconds. The rest of the song is literally dead space. I was baffled by what I was hearing because I couldn't believe how awful this piece of music was and that X's label thought anyone needed to hear this. numb the pain somehow has less going on than the aforementioned interlude with the worst vocal performance from X to date. Not only are they badly sung but the audio quality is bad on top of that. When the nonexistent instrumental is added to the mix and everything begins to loop, the result is the worst X song in history and one of the worst songs I've heard this year. before i realize, triumph, UGLY, CHASE / glass shards are all throwaway piece of garbage non-songs that shouldn't exist. Final note on how poorly X is portrayed on this album... the guitar solo on HEARTEATER... oh man... I laughed the first time I heard it. It sounds like an 8 year old just learning how play.
The features on Bad Vibes Forever make up the bulk of the content with X sporadically laying a verse or a hook in between. I'd say the features are hit and miss but mostly misses. One of which was the hilariously stupid Lil Wayne verse on School Shooters with lines that will make you groan harder than the corniest dad joke. "Give me bad grades, I don't give a F" would give the whitest father in America secondhand embarrassment. Noah Cyrus is on this album although she doesn't fit into the listening circle of an X fan, nor did she have meaningful interactions with X when he was alive, nor does her music resemble X's in any way so why is she here? Tory Lanez, Lil Wayne, Rick Ross & blink-182 are other examples of artists that X fans wouldn't be interested in hearing on an X project, especially not a posthumous one. Tom G ruins the song Kill My Vibe with vocals that sound like Mr. Burns contracted bronchitis and started harmonizing (at least I think that's what he was trying to do) with a harmonica stuck in his windpipe, it's unique in how terrible it sounds. Even Joyner Lucas dropped a sub par verse on the North Star remix that was definitely shoved in at the last minute.
At one hour long Bad Vibes Forever is a thoroughly un-enjoyable and frustrating experience, especially coming from those who connected with X's music on an emotional level. While not everything is downright terrible and there are decent ideas/melodies for songs, none of the twenty-five tracks on here are fully fledged songs. X's involvement ranges from being the only artist on the track but failing to own it, to barely being involved at all. Listening to Bad Vibes Forever makes you feel like you wasted your time and for X fans such as myself, it makes you frustrated that Empire & Capitol would release these minimum effort cash grabs just to capitalize on X's cult fan base. I wouldn't defend this album if I were you, X would've probably hated this thing.
I'll give Bad Vibes Forever a 1.5/10.
We didn't need this.
