Lil Peep

As brief as his career was (his first mixtape came out in late 2015 and he was dead of an overdose two years later), Lil Peep—born Gustav Åhr in 1996—had a real impact on the culture around him, riding a hybrid of emo and rap that brought raw teenage depression to life in sound. Raised in Long Island, he spent most of his teens in and out of homelessness in Los Angeles. Finding a like-minded community online, Peep released his first tracks to YouTube and SoundCloud, weaving samples of early-2000s bands like Brand New and Modest Mouse into trap beats and eerily sing-songy raps about drugs, depression and broken relationships. Bleak as it was, there was something beautiful about it, too, the nursery-rhyme quality of tracks like “Beamer Boy” and “White Wine”, or the way Peep seemed to hover at the edge of consciousness. (That Peep seemed to have a sense of humour about himself—that he could sound almost comically bored by his own feelings—didn’t hurt, nor did the fact that he knew his way around a melody, things he probably picked up listening to pop-punk.) After a run of mixtapes, he released Come Over When You’re Sober, Pt. 1; a follow-up, Come Over When You’re Sober, Pt. 2, was released posthumously. “They tell me all the time that it helps them stay alive and keeps them from committing suicide and stuff like that,” Peep told Apple Music, describing the effect of his music on the lives of his fans. “I’ve seen countless, hundreds of Lil Peep tattoos, so these people are really dedicated and have devoted their lives to my music, and it’s pretty crazy. And it blows my mind, but I love it. It’s a great thing and if it’s helping people, then that’s why I’m doing it.”