Take a song like “Problems.” Peep admits spending “a lot of time in the background,” delivering the line with a haziness that feels like he’s disappearing into the walls. There was comfort in the pack and any risk to my place within that space made my anxiety skyrocket. To go with the threads, I also sported a mask of personability to avoid being picked on-another weapon in my mission of blending in. Instead, I hid in the kind of casual wear tracksuits all Dublin boys my age wore. I didn’t ask for nice things if they meant I’d be noticed. They make for a distinct collage.Īs a teenager, all I wanted to be was transparent. Place his songs over my own life and the two don’t sync up but the hard borders and brash colours underneath can easily be seen. It’s as though Peep’s music has been sketched onto tracing paper.
But his best songs-the dysfunctional relationship tale “Save That Shit” the numbing insight into addiction “White Wine”-offer weighty depictions of youth, relationships, mental health issues, and trenchant lessons for adulthood that I can’t turn away from. Our experiences were undoubtedly different-I’ve never wrangled with the same kind of drug addictions. Yet into my thirties, I feel a connection with Lil Peep. Lots of kids back then saw their existence reflected in Cobain’s songwriting, but not me. I was an awkward kid, uncomfortable in my own skin, subdued in a school system that was more about trying to survive day-to-day than flourishing. I think about Peep’s young life and my own in parallels. Like his idol, Kurt Cobain, a generation earlier, an army of young followers found something soothing in the rapper’s penetrating portrait of post-adolescence. He lived to an age when our bodies reach adulthood but few of us hit mental maturity-depicting this gulf between underdeveloped emotional fortitude and grown-up experience. Just 21 when he died, Peep had the natural ability to evoke the internal pain that cuts through the chest cavity of everyone from teenager up. He left a discography that boasts its own kind of perfection-a reminder that art doesn’t have to be flawless if it channels something inherent to the human spirit. As an artist, he had space to grow.īut to polish Peep’s music would have been to strip away some of its resonance. A line such as “Girls, like it on my dick,” from the song “Girls,” is an oafish bout of immaturity.
Even singles like “Benz Truck” and “White Wine” have space for a bridge, an extra verse, or both, as though he signed off on tracks quickly to move onto his next burst of creativity. A lot of his songs feel unfinished, the fidelity is scuzzy, and the choruses are either not quite there yet or nonexistent. Lil Peep’s music could be as unvarnished as his videos.
I’ve probably spun more of his music than that of any other artist in 2018. I dragged his best numbers onto a playlist with little thought or reason, often clicking play when I didn’t know what I wanted to listen to. Here was a magnetic young kid flexing like a pop star but sounding like a doomed prophet. From there, I began to investigate the far corners of Peep’s short but prolific recording career. “Benz Truck” was the first to enter my orbit. I hadn’t heard much about him before he died, but in his wake, the Gustav Ahr’s music became impossible to ignore. The news of Lil Peep’s death-a year ago last week-broke a lot of hearts but it didn’t immediately break mine. You’ll never get Hype Williams-sized budgets these days but you can wear a synthetic pink and green fur coat and stunt in front of The Kremlin. Meanwhile, the video operated as an exhibition of guerilla filmmaking.
#Little bo peep rapper full
Even the reference to his full rap name “Little Bo Peep,” played like an act of genre subversion. Spitting classic rap braggadocio about limousine trucks and iced-out whips, Peep name-dropped his GothBoiClique to signify a brash show of strength, but simultaneously applied it to an androgynous emo-rap that defied traditional hip-hop norms. The instrument highlights the half-lucid vocal style that made him an instantly quotable hook machine.
Like many Peep cuts, “Benz Truck” rides a sinister and muddied guitar line that sounds snatched from the 1990s alternative rock canon. But within that brief span, he delivered a 160-second distillation of his electric star quality. Lil Peep’s existence was short and chaotic. Dean Van Nguyen can take you there, but baby, you won’t make it back.
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