Pills and Syrup: The Damaging Reality of Drug User Rap
How Lil Peep’s death represents an extremely low point in the rap game
“I’m doing better, drug wise.”
“I wouldn’t be alive right now without music… It’s got me out of serious drug addiction. It’s got me through sucidal shit, self-harm, the list goes on.”
These were some of the last public words of late rapper Lil Peep documented in his i-D Winter 2017 feature interview.
His interview was one that stuck out to me from the other fifty-eight interviews that fill the i-D ‘Sounding Off’ issue pages front to back. The stunning black and white portraits of the then 20-year-old rapper’s timid frame and large brown eyes present an endearing visual, complete with the several tattoos across his face and body in all their rugged glory. Reading his open and honest account of drug addiction and mental illness, one could not help but grow a natural liking for Lil Peep. His words plainly reveal his personality as a bashful artist whose deep love and appreciation for music helped him to get through the darkest aspects of his personal life.
One month later on 15 November 2017, I read the headline, ‘Rising emo rapper Lil Peep dies aged 21’. The news of Lil Peep’s death, caused by a fatal overdose of a Xanax and Fentanyl cocktail, brought a shock so sudden I gasped audibly in the midst of my classmates that fateful Thursday morning. According to him in his i-D interview, he was ‘doing better’. The music he was making and the projects he was releasing were giving him the sustained lifeline that he so desperately needed. He recently celebrated his 21st birthday. What could have possibly sent Lil Peep over the edge? He so openly suffered with his existence as seen in his soul-baring lyrics and it distressed me to realise that he had been failed — by his management, by his publicists, by the people that push the drug user movement in rap.
Lil Peep could have survived.
“They gon’ miss me when I’m dead, I lay my head and rest in peace, I’m prayin’ to the sky, and I don’t even know why” Lil Peep — Praying To The Sky
“Shout out to everyone makin’ my beats, You helpin’ me preach, This music’s the only thing keepin’, the peace when I’m fallin’ to pieces” Lil Peep — Star Shopping
“So it seems every time that I die I wake up, When it’s time to meet my maker I’ll be ready for him” Lil Peep — Toxic City
It is difficult not to become nauseous with sorrow when listening back to some the troubled rapper’s hits that helped him rise through the ranks of Soundcloud rappers. What is particularly concerning, is that sad and despairing drug-laced lyrics are apparently what sell and top the charts in 2017. Future’s ‘Mask Off’, Lil Uzi Vert’s ‘XO Tour Lif3’, and Post Malone’s ‘Rockstar’ are just a few of the tracks that mark the sad-boy-recreational-drug-user aesthetic that plagues rap today. But if Lil Peep’s bleak lyrics are anything to go by, his life as an artist recounting tales of prescription drugs and suicidal thoughts are anything but an aesthetic.
The generational shift from drug dealer rap of the 80s and 90s to Millenial drug user rap is a worrying reflection of an era of addicted rappers. But drug use in rap is not anything new. Artists have been snorting cocaine and smoking crack since the 70s and 80s, albeit keeping it neatly under wraps most of the time and most definitely out of their music for fear of public scrutiny. However, early rappers like Kurtis Blow and Kool Rock-Ski also directly referenced cocaine in their stage names.
What we have in rap today is codeine-soaked, Percocet-induced catchy hooks that make no secret of glorifying drug use. The likes of Future and Young Thug have perfected the art of creating glamourous hits that rap about overindulgence in prescription drugs as a boastful testament to their lives of excessive luxury.
In a 2016 interview Future did with French outlet Clique TV, the Atlanta rapper claimed that he was not actually a drug addict and that the frequent drug use he raps about is somewhat of a ‘marketing gimmick’. “I feel like that’s the number one thing everybody likes to talk about,” he said. “It’s a catch.”
“Percocets, molly, Percocets
Percocets, molly, Percocets
Rep the set, gotta rep the set
Chase a check, never chase a bitch
Mask on, fuck it, mask off
Mask on, fuck it, mask off”Future — Mask Off
A ‘catch’ indeed. It is a sad state of affairs in which the very real prescription drug addiction widespread across the US is being flipped into a marketing tool. It’s unlikely that Future knows what drug-dependent depression feels like. He probably has no idea what it is like to feel the need to cloud crippling anxiety with a bottle of pills. But it seems that he is aware of the widespread opioid addiction crisis in America killing almost 100 people a day and as far as he is concerned, this is a convenient peddle push on the marketability of his drug inspired music.
On the topic of drug use in rap, there is a large amount of hipocrasy amongst rappers themselves. Vic Mensa spoke out shortly after Lil Peep’s death on the level of drug abuse, condeming Future in particular for his music but also acknowledging his own reckless rapping about drugs, “On one hand I almost don’t even feel that I have a right to chastise anybody because I’ve fucking done it. I’ve rapped about Xanax. I regret it. I don’t rap about it anymore, but I have some lines about taking Xanax. I just think that we’re in such a dangerous place now because it’s been normalized and the drug abuse has been reduced to like a marketing tactic.”
Rollin’ like a stoner, I don’t care about everything
Out of control, I forgot to take my medicine
If I take this pill, will that be the death of me?
I am a disaster, I don’t need a recipe
Tried to be sober, that didn’t work for me
I don’t know your name, please excuse my memory
Anti-social, get the fuck away from me
I got a problem
Rockstar life
I got the salts, I got the spice (vroom, vroom)Vic Mensa — Rollin’ Like A Stoner
Lil Peep’s music is markedly different from his chart-topping Hip Hop contemporaries. Whilst their songs are opioid inspired tales that capture living a life in excess that spark viral dance challenges, his stories feel painfully personal and real. Growing up in Long Island, California, Lil Peep endured a despondent drug-fuelled childhood with an absent father. Aged 18, he made the journey to LA to become the artist he always knew he was going to be. His style of rap is emotional and he has been cited by music website Genius as the of pioneer of ‘Emo Rap’. The real power of his music found him expressing his hurt into art that his fans could relate to. Rap/Hip Hop still remains a significant genre of music despite this harrowing development in the past two decades. Lil Peep is just the latest of artists in the rap game to suffer an untimely death due to a fatal overdose. The genre is one that is popular for its artists skilful ability to unashamedly present the most real and harsh aspects of their lives in their lyrics. Drugs and death are an inextricable part of that culture. Yet one cannot help but question whether it has to be this way.
