Although its release was reportedly withheld in the wake of the Parkland school shooting in 2018, the posthumous XXXTentacion song “School Shooters” received a visual release today complete with a cinematic music video reflecting guest rapper Lil Wayne’s ruminative lyrics. In the song, Lil Wayne adopts the voice of a stressed-out, bullied student who contemplates getting revenge: “Intellect mixed with inner stress / That’s a recipe for disaster,” he rhymes.
As the song was completed after XXXTentacion’s own death in 2018, his presence on the track is limited to his muted chorus and the outro, on which he questions, “How did this happen? Can we go backwards?” The video is dedicated to Anthony Borges, one of the victims of the shooting in Parkland, Florida, and opens with a photo of XXXTentacion visiting Borges in the hospital. Directed by Eif Rivera, the clip focuses on Lil Wayne rapping his verse from atop a police cruiser as students run out of the school building and heavily armed police swarm toward the shooter. It ends with the reveal that the shooting was a dream sequence, prevented by the intervention of the bullied teen’s mother, along with a title card reading, “#StopBullying. If you see something, say something,” and a link to http://www.stopbullying.gov.
“School Shooters” appears on the posthumous XXXTentacion release, Bad Vibes Forever.
Watch the “School Shooters” video above.