True Love by XXXTENTACION & Kanye West Song Info
“True Love” sees Kanye West and the late XXXTENTACION singing about the complicated nature of love and their struggles to keep their relationships alive on a beat reminiscent of Ye’s magnum opus, “Runaway.” A demo of the song was previewed on February 22, 2022, as the opener of the Miami listening party for Ye’s eleventh studio album, DONDA 2. That demo was later released on Ye’s Stem Player platform on February 24, 2022, with different drums from the listening party version. The next day the “Stadium Version” was released, and the drums were changed back to how it was heard live in Miami. After that, the “crushed drums” version was removed and the “Stadium Version” was kept. Three months later, on May 19, XXXTENTACION’s estate started teasing the collaboration’s final release by posting tweets of X praising Ye dating back to 2014-2015 via Instagram and Twitter. On May 23, 2022, “True Love” was announced to release the following Friday as the lead single for both Donda 2 and LOOK AT ME: THE ALBUM, via Instagram. On May 26, the day before the song’s release, the final version of “True Love” was premiered on iHeart radio. XXXTENTACION’s estate shared a short video extracted from the end credits from the documentary Look at Me: XXXTENTACION leading up to the song’s release. X’s close collaborator and producer, John Cunningham, stated via social media that: "TRUE LOVE WASN’T RECYCLED OR UNUSED LYRICS IT WAS ONE OF THE FEW SONGS WE STARTED IN 2018 BUT NEVER FINISHED. CLEARLY THIS WAS MEANT TO BE." Also, this marks the second collaboration between the two artists, following XXXTENTACION’s “One Minute.” “True Love” debuted and peaked at #22 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the chart week ending June 11, 2022.
