I've Been Waiting

Album: Greatest Hits: Believers Never Die - Volume Two (2019)
Charted: 62
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Songfacts®:

  • This dance-ready track was recorded by Lil Peep with his friend and collaborator, iLoveMakonnen. It began as a demo from iLoveMakonnen that he played to Lil Peep in around July 2017 and was one of about 20 songs the pair collaborated on up to the rapper's death four months later.
  • Following Lil Peep's passing, Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy reached out to iLoveMakonnen, offering condolences. The Atlanta singer-songwriter told Wentz that Peep was a fan of his band and he felt that his style was a combination of him (iLoveMakonnen) and Fall Out Boy. He sent Wentz this track, with his and Peep's vocals already recorded. Fall Out Boy added some elements and sent it back.
  • iLoveMakonnen solicited help from more songwriters and record producers to complete the song, including Louis Bell, who worked on Post Malone's "Rockstar" and Halsey's "Without Me." Bell happened to be working in the same studio when Makonnen and Peep were working on the track together. After Peep's passing, the hitmaker offered his help to Makonnen on the track.

    "We were getting down to mixing, he was there to help start mixing it, and piecing it together, and added production," iLoveMakonnen told Billboard. "It sort of took a new life in production then."
  • The song is about an addictive relationship that the artists just can't get enough of.

    Break my heart but don't tell me I'm not doin' fine
    'Cause I'll do it fine
    Let me go, I'm spendin' time
    Not doin' fine but I'll do it fine


    It is not made clear to whom or what the artists are desiring. They might be singing about their love for a girl or it could be for an illegal substance.
  • The song marked Lil Peep's second released collaboration with iLoveMakonnen following "Falling Down" (also recorded as "Sunlight on Your Skin").
  • "I've Been Waiting" lived up to its title, taking six months to complete. Wentz told Billboard "the most heavy lifting" to him was the blending of Lil Peep, iLoveMakonnen and Fall Out Boy bandmate Patrick Stump's vocals.

    "It's three really different ways of singing, and trying to blend it and make it feel like it's not like this hodgepodge and make it feel like it's more like a stew or something like that with different ingredients, was the heavy lifting to me," he explained. "On paper, this is a crazy idea, but to make it work, you have to kind of blend - it's pretty disparate sounding-wise."
  • The song's music video was directed by Andrew Donoho and stars iLoveMakonnen, Pete Wentz and Patrick Stump in a magical dreamlike world filled with giant waterfalls and wondrous creatures.

    The visual's concept had originally been developed by Lil Peep and iLoveMakonnen, when the two initially recorded the track. Makonnen told Billboard: "Me and Peep first had the idea about doing it in a hot air balloon and transporting to a different type of world, almost like an Alice in Wonderland-type of thing."

    Wentz added they "were trying to create a moving, surrealist painting."
  • The song was included on Fall Out Boy's 2019 greatest hits collection Believers Never Die - Volume Two.

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