XXXTENTACION’s 2017 breakout single “Look At Me” has been certified platinum by the RIAA. Earlier this week, X posted a snapshot of the RIAA certification and captioned the photo, “say what you want, but you will always be forced to accept that I’m out here living my ‘own’ life.”
Originally released on SoundCloud on December 31, 2015, the breakout track samples “Changes” by British dubstep DJ Mala. The song recently passed 90 million plays on the music sharing platform.
Co-producer Rojas explained how the song came to be in Genius’ annotations of the record. “One day me and X were sitting at the crib going through beats and he wasn’t really rocking with any of them, and then the last one I showed him was that beat, and he was like, ‘Rojas, this is it!,'” he explained. “In 15 minutes, it was done. X already knew the whole song in his head before he made it. He’s creative as fuck. X decided to distort the whole track in one.”
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Throughout 2016, a year that X spent partly behind bars, the song’s eardrum-shattering bass and shouted chorus helped grow a huge underground following. Fans love the song so much that one recently got in legal trouble for blasting it in church.
In January 2017, “Look At Me” was remastered and released as a proper single. Nearly two months later, it debuted at #95 on the Billboard Hot 100 and peaked at #34.
The song’s notoriety hit new heights when Drake was accused of jacking X’s flow for his More Life track “KMT.” Their mostly one-sided feud helped propel X’s name into Hip Hop headlines, and intense concert performances (as well as getting KO’ed on stage) helped keep him there.
2017 has been a wild year for X, and though he recently announced plans to “disappear,” his new project 17is expected to arrive on August 25.
