“As complicated and conflicting as posthumous releases can be I feel I’ll hold this one in a special place,” X’s collaborator John Cunningham says of Lil Uzi Vert-featuring track
The estate of XXXTentacion marked the five-year anniversary of the rapper’s death Sunday with the official release of “I’m Not Human,” featuring Lil Uzi Vert.
The acoustic ballad was previously teased on what would have been the rapper born Jahseh Onfroy’s 25th birthday on Jan. 23, but the release was held until Sunday, exactly five years after Onfroy was shot and killed in Florida at the age of 20.
In a note that accompanied the track, X’s longtime collaborator John Cunningham said, “When I was living with Jah in Florida in 2018 we would spend most days in his room, me playing guitar and him singing, and the day he first sang “I’m not human” as I was playing that guitar part we both looked at each other and cracked a smile, knowing it was special. We listened back to the voice memo he recorded and talked about finishing it, but the few times that we tried recording vocals in the studio the feeling was never the same and he always preferred the original voice memo which is why we chose to keep it in the official version of the song.”
Cunningham continued, “The conversation with Uzi about finding the right time and the right song for a posthumous release with Jahseh dates back to late 2018 before the release of SKINS. Uzi came to Florida, played basketball with X’s little brother Aidan, listened to the album with Cleo and I, but eventually they felt it wasn’t the right time for a song and it was agreed that we would rather wait for something to feel right rather than force it. Year later I’m happy to say the right time and right song aligned after Cleo and Uzi reconnected in late 2022.”
Onfroy was shot and killed June 18, 2018 outside a motorcycle shop in Deerfield Beach, Florida in a robbery gone wrong. In March 2023, the three men charged in the murder of the rapper were convicted and subsequently sentenced to life in prison.
“I met up with Uzi at the studio and after one of the few heartfelt conversations we’d have that night, I played the song— which hadn’t been touched since May of 2018— and after seeing Uzi’s reaction to the song it felt as though the past few years of conversations and back-and-forth song ideas had all led up to this. That feeling was echoed after hearing Uzi and Jahseh’s voices together in a way that neither of them have ever sounded,” Cunningham added.
“As complicated and conflicting as posthumous releases can be I feel I’ll hold this one in a special place due to the fact that I was able to have some small part in connecting two of the most pure and loving people I know.”