While the song is obviously designed to appeal to the mass of casual listeners who were fans of both artists, to fans of Peep it feels like a kick in the teeth. It was tragedy enough that Peep had to die so young that his unreleased material is being pillaged for a cheap novelty like “Falling Down” adds insult to injury. The thread received 175 replies, many in strong support of the subreddit’s boycott. “Out of respect to Peep/GBC and in defiance of Columbia Records we've decided that it is simply inappropriate and unethical for us to allow posting of the coming release and support of this song,” wrote a moderator of the Goth Boi Clique subreddit. When news first broke of the release, Peep’s fans were also vehemently against supporting the song. He never would have signed up for that, he did not like XXXTentacion.”

“This shit is people trying to make money off him. “ 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. Peep’s fellow GothBoiClique member Fish Narc slammed the collaboration on Instagram, telling his followers that “Peep never heard the XXX feature.” When Makonnen first started posting about an X/Peep collaboration back in August, the track was strongly condemned by Peep’s friends and family. Peep had both explicit and rumored beef with X and his close collaborators before his death––X’s friend Ski Mask The Slump God allegedly called Peep a “faggot”––and so it’s unlikely that this collaboration would have ever happened had he not passed away last November. “Falling Down” might be an example of posthumous collabs going wrong. Posthumous collaborations tend to be treated with a certain touchiness, and fairly so it is incredibly hard to do right by an artist’s legacy when the artist isn’t around to guide the final product.

Falling down lil peep