The Brightside of Lil Peep
A deep dive into the legacy of Lil Peep and what separates him from other SoundCloud rappers.
You might have heard the name Lil Peep before and understandably dismissed him as just another lil rapper to come out of the SoundCloud underground. With contemporaries such as Lil Xan, Lil Pump, Tekashi 6ix9ine, and many other face-tatted, rainbow-haired artists, it can be hard to differentiate between artists riding a wave and those actually changing the music industry in big ways.
In the case of Lil Peep, he was on of the artists leading the Cloud rap movement. In his short career he pioneered the emo rap genre, inspired and influenced many prominent artists, and revealed a brutally honest side of himself that we rarely get from artists through their work.
Pioneering Emo Rap
Fusing elements of trap and pop punk, Lil Peep has evolved Cloud rap into an authentic, emotionally-charged brand of music. He grew up with a strong love for pop punk and emo punk bands like Blink-182 and The Used, which he borrows heavily from in his vocal style.
Rather than pretend I know more than I do about the origin story punk music and how artists such as Bob Dylan, The Sex Pistols, and Green Day paved the way for Lil Peep and emo rap, I’ll let this video essay from misteramazing cover this part of the story:
Picking up where misteramazing left off, I want to tie Lil Peep back into the context of punk music and discuss in more detail the elements of his music that draw from the punk scene.
In Lil Peep’s earlier work, we see a much darker, punk-influenced version of his style from what we’re exposed to on his official album release. His Crybaby and Hellboy mixtapes combine trap beats with sample from artists including Pierce The Veil, Avenged Sevenfold, Radiohead, and more. This overlap between two polarized genres serve as the basis for Lil Peep’s sound.
With his lyrics he mirrored the fusing of trap and punk music, by delivering trap-inspired lyrics in a gritty, whiney tone that’s reminiscent of Kurt Cobain.
This raw, unpolished delivery of lyrics shows an unrestrained expression of emotion. It portrays a loss of care and control that complements the often desperate angst of the punk subculture.
We see similar vocals styles throughout the punk genre in bands like Blink-182, Weezer, (getting into some more obscure examples here) Big Black, La Dispute,
And for these reasons, it makes sense to view Lil Peep in the context of punk music, considering the enormous influence this music had on his sound.
Literary Analysis
One of the major differentiating factor that sets Lil Peep apart from similar artists is his poetic channeling of his raw emotions — something that is rarely, if at all, explored by his contemporaries. Here we’re going to analyze Lil Peep’s artistry from a literary perspective to demonstrate the literary merit of his lyrics.
Style
One of the major criticisms of SoundCloud rap is that they lack the lyricism and delivery of other rappers. If we compared Lil Peep to someone like Eminem, there’s no question that Eminem scores infinitely higher on lyricism, rhyme construction, and of course the pure skill required for Eminem’s rapid delivery of words. Despite both Eminem and Lil Peep existing in the broad genre of hip-hop, it’s an unfair comparison.
“There are trap artists […] whose music, to me, really is game game-changing. They’ve introduced a whole different style to this vast genre of music, and they should receive their credit and their shine for that. […] It’s two different lanes and they both need to be respected as such.”
— Joey Bada$$
Joey Bada$$, one of the most lyrically talented artists in hip-hop, suggests that we need to separate hip-hop into sub-genres and stop comparing genres that value different traits. He argues that trap rap, mumble rap, even auto-tune rap should each be judged separately because their value is determined by different criteria.
In my mind it’s like pitting a kitten against a cheetah. The kitten is cuddly and would make a great pet; the cheetah will rip you to shreds and can outrun any other animal. Both have valuable qualities, but different, and should be treated as such.
Lil Peep’s lyricism can be classified as minimalist, a writing style with it’s roots in the work of William Carlos Williams during the early 19th century, and later popularized by Ernest Hemingway, among other writers, in his work throughout the mid-early 1900s. It is best characterized by its short, simplistic, and direct structure, similar to what is practiced in journalism writing.
Minimalism is generally less appealing than the competing writing styles which used extravagance and verbosity to flaunt artistic ability. The ability to craft a passage that is beautifully depressing tends to be more appealing to the average reader than one that is just depressing. However, elegant craftsmanship is not the sole measure of a work’s artistic value. Minimalism’s core strength in accessibility — it’s easy to read and understand— and realism — it’s raw and honest.
Plainly put: fancy words don’t make something good, and sometimes fancy words are bad because they’re harder to understand and relate to.
Lord Byron and F. Scott Fitzgerald are good examples of respective contemporaries to Williams and Hemingway. Like Eminem, Byron and Fitzgerald exhibited mastery of the written word through sheer complexity and technical skill. The complexity in their writing is part of the art. For example, the extravagant writing in The Great Gatsby pairs very well with its themes of false nobility because its style is a facade to its more sombre message.
At the same time, Lil Peep along with Williams and Hemingway, choose to communicate with brevity and simplicity. The messages these writers are communicating are typically from the perspective of the downtrodden people in society. For example, Hemingway’s characters were often soldiers, fishermen, form the lower working class.
In this context, Lil Peep’s lyrics demonstrate a great deal of literary merit. It can be argued that other artists — many of whom I would not deem to demonstrate literary merit — also employ minimalism in their writing style. However, there is a key distinction that separates legitimate use of minimalism and that is intent and execution. Minimalism needs to make sense in the context of its subject matter and themes.
Themes
Lil Peep makes use of minimalism with the intent to communicate directly and with raw emotion, whereas artists like Lil Pump use it due to a drug-addled, complete lack of effort, with the intent to fill a beat with words (if we’re lucky). This difference is abundantly clear when comparing the following Lil Peep and Lil Pump passages and examining their themes:
Help me find a way to pass the time
Everybody tellin’ me life’s short, but I wanna die
Help me find a way to make you mine
Everybody tellin’ me not to, but I’m gonna try
Now I’m gettin’ high again, tonight
— Lil Peep, The Brightside
Lil Pump, what’s your take on this?
Only wear designer, esskeetit (ooh!)
Hoppin’ out the Wraith, esskeetit (esskeetit!)
Smashin’ on your bitch, esskeetit (ooh!)
Runnin’ up a check with no limit (chyeah!)
Poppin’ on X, poppin’ on X
Poppin’ on X, pills (yuh, X)
— Lil Pump, ESSKEETIT
Both passages have a love interest (“Help me find a way to make you mine” / ”Smashin’ on your bitch, esskeetit”) and drug abuse (“Now I’m gettin’ high again, tonight” / “Poppin’ on X, pills”), but approach the topics from a different perspective.
Lil Peep approaches the topics from a place of sincerity and seriousness, painting a vivid picture of the lonely void that can result from unreciprocated love and subsequent drug abuse. On the other hand, Lil Pump approaches the same topics from a place of unapologetic commoditization of love and glorification of drugs. Those are the facts, but merit is inherently subjective. It’s the prerogative of the listener to decide which artist conveys a deeper and more respectable message. (My vote is for Lil Peep.)
We could go on forever comparing Lil Peep’s lyrics to those of other similar artists, but I think this example is a fair comparison that illustrates Lil Peep’s separation from his contemporaries in the SoundCloud rap landscape.
In these passages, we see Lil Peep use minimalism to pull back the veil on themes of love and drug abuse, exposing them as weaknesses. On the other hand, Lil Pump’s use of minimalism obscures and diminishes the same themes.
Using the framing of punk music, Lil Peep was able to shine a more somber and honest light on topics often glorified by artists such as Lil Pump. Lil Peep mimicked the style and the rhetoric of these artists, but challenged their perspective through a depressing shift in tonality.
Lil Peep often explored themes of relating to depression, anxiety, love, loneliness, and drug abuse in his songs; and he did so in a way that was honest and relatable to many people. Here are some more Lil Peep lyrics that touch on these themes:
This music’s the only thing keeping the peace when I’m falling to pieces.
— Lil Peep, Star Shopping
Please don’t love me // Don’t get close // I can’t show you this side of me // I’m burnin’ up, I’m next to death
— Fat Nick and Lil Peep, P.S F**k You C**t (feat. Lil Peep)
Runnin’ away from you takes time and pain // And I don’t even want to // So, I’m gettin’ high all week without you // Poppin’ pills, thinkin’ about you
— Lil Peep, U Said
Lil Peep’s Legacy
In order to fully contextualize an artist’s influence on the music industry, it’s important to look at how other artists regarded their work. In Lil Peep’s case he had already garnered reverence from many prominent artists with just a single official album release under his belt.
In the wake of Lil Peep’s death at the age of 21, there was a surprising amount of support and love from artists in the mainstream. From the tweets below, it’s clear that his influence reached far outside the sub-culture of emo rap.
Post Malone by far paid the most respect to him by getting a tattoo of Lil Peep’s face on his arm after his death. Listen to Post’s emotional and unfettered praise of Lil Peep’s potential while discussing his passing on the H3 Podcast.
Within the emo rap scene, we see Lil Peep’s influence living on through other members of GothBoiClique (the artist collective Lil Peep belonged to) and artists like lil aaron, smrtdeath, and countless other up-and-coming artists inspired by the music Lil Peep made.
And that’s the brightside of Lil Peep.
This article mainly focuses on Lil Peep’s music and lyrics, but there’s plenty I left out in this article that I think really speaks to who Lil Peep was as a person. So here’s a few videos that I think show his personality better than I could ever describe it.
