A Beginner’s Guide to Lil Peep
Taking you from the artist’s more mellow, low-key tracks to the heavier joints to help you acclimatize to a strange but wonderful world of music
On an unassuming November day in 2017, the world abruptly suffered the loss of a creative giant whose angsty brilliance was comparable to no one before him save a scrawny, blue-eyed poet named Kurt Cobain.
It’s an ambitious comparison, I know, but not an inaccurate one: with the ease it took him to blend together the most seemingly incompatible genres, with his commitment to express his pain without even a hint of inauthenticity and with his undeniable charisma as an icon for those on the fringe who never felt like they belonged, there is no doubt in my mind that Lil Peep — born Gustav Ahr — will one day be remembered as a voice of a generation just as Kurt is now.
Still, just as is the case with any art ahead of its time, Gus’s music isn’t the sort of thing you can just ease yourself into if you aren’t prepared for it. The sound’s atmosphere can be as haunting as a slasher film, the lyrics can range from the vulgar to the outright disturbing and even Peep’s physical appearance, marked by a massive “Cry Baby” face tattoo, can be difficult to get on board with.
