Rising Rapper Lil Peep Dead at 21
Lil Peep, the New York rapper who mixed guitar-driven emo and rap production on
mixtapes that gained millions of plays on SoundCloud, died Wednesday night at
age 21. A representative for the rapper confirmed his death to Rolling
Stone, but said that the cause of death was undetermined.
"I am shocked and heartbroken," said Sarah Sennett – the CEO of First Access
Entertainment, a management and publishing company that partnered with Lil Peep
last year – in a statement. "I do not believe Peep wanted to die, this is so
tragic. He had big goals and dreams for the future which he had shared with me,
his team, his family and his friends. He was highly intelligent, hugely
creative, massively charismatic, gentle and charming. He had huge ambition and
his career was flourishing."
"I've been expecting this call for a year," the rapper's manager Chase Ortega
tweeted. "Mother f---."
Born Gustav Ã…hr on November 1st, 1996 in Long Island, New York and raised in
Long Beach, Ã…hr dropped out of high school and completed his GED through
computer courses before moving to Los Angeles. "I moved out here straight out of
high school thinking I was going to pay rent with this SoundCloud rap career I
had going on," Lil Peep told Pitchfork in 2016. "But it turned out I couldn’t really
do that yet. So I had to go back [to Long Island]." He soon returned to the West
Coast and recorded some of his best-known material in his apartment in L.A.
He released his debut, Lil Peep Part One, through Bandcamp in
December of 2015: The project mixed languorous guitars, bracing, often bleak
lyrics – "I got a feeling that I'm not gonna be here for next year," he sang on
"The Way I See Things" – and trap drums. Ã…hr continued to refine this sound on a
series of releases; the latest, Come Over When You're Sober, Pt. 1.,
arrived in August.
Peep was hailed as a young artist reviving emo for a hip-hop age. Ã…hr
described his sound as "a whole new thing." "It's good for the emo genre as a
whole and all the fans and all the people who ever liked it, because it’s going
to keep it relevant," he added. "It's just adapting to the new sounds that
people want to listen to when they hop in the car and s---."
Even as he accumulated millions of streams across platforms, Ã…hr admitted
that he struggled with drug use and suicidal thoughts. "I suffer from depression
and some days I wake up and I’m like, F---, I wish I didn’t wake up," he told
Pitchfork. "That was part of why I moved to California; trying to get
away from the place that was doing that to me, and the people I was around. I
realized it was just myself – it's a chemical imbalance in my brain."
As news of his death spread, rockers, producers and rappers remembered Lil
Peep on Twitter. "Lil Peep forever," wrote Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz. "Peep had so much more to do,
man; he was constantly inspiring me," Diplo added. Chart-topper Post Malone posted a photo with Peep and
added, "In the short time that I knew you, you were a great friend to me and a
great person. Your music changed the world and it'll never be the same."
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