Lil Peep: the YouTube rapper who's taking back emo

A brief introduction to Lil Peep: he’s a 20-year-old rapper who lives in LA, is big on social media and whose videos have more than 1m YouTube views each. He has tattoos on every stretch of skin, most notably the word “Crybaby” above his right eyebrow. At the time of writing, his hair is dyed half-pink, half-black. While he might not say so himself, Lil Peep also makes a style of music that has been crowned “emo-trap”.

Since the release of his 2015 debut album, LiL PEEP PART ONE, the musician – AKA Gustav Ahr – has been responsible for a singular strain of music that draws on both the triple-time hi-hats of southern US rap and the angsty introspection of post-hardcore rock. Take Peep’s biggest track, OMFG, for instance: lines such as: “My life is going nowhere/ I want everyone to know that I don’t care,” delivered over a beat that sounds like an Atlantan hip-hop producer reworking an Elliott Smith song. With Peep’s samples of bands such as Underoath and the Postal Service and themes of sex, suicide and cocaine sung in an apathetic drawl, you’d be forgiven for thinking the Used’s Bert McCracken had joined Migos.

If that sounds unnatural on paper, emo-trap has actually been a long time coming. Since electro-punk pioneers Crystal Castles the fusion of icy synths and deafening nihilism has proved irresistible. Portland pop-duo Magic Fades – who are credited with naming the sub-genre “health goth” – have been producing futurist R&B indebted to heavy metal since 2012, while newer crews of MCs such as Goth Money Records make hazy melodic rap wearing Linkin Park T-shirts. Yet it’s taken Lil Peep to fully realise emo-trap as the sum of its parts.

A cynic might say this style is only internet collagism – that, unlike the sincere emotionality of scene stalwarts such as Taking Back Sunday, Lil Peep has just adopted the emo aesthetic. In a recent Pitchfork interview, Peep explained that he was merely “giving it [rap] that emo spin”. That said, perhaps this ironic rehash of a bygone genre is logical for a generation raised on memes.

If there is one truth emo-trap underlines, though, it’s that music made by teens for teens will always return to the same emotional places. Lil Peep is simply repurposing Kurt Cobain for bedroom diarists who are more used to rap than they are guitars. This is not to dismiss the seriousness of either artist’s depression, but musicians embittered with existence have long attracted young people experiencing the high drama of adolescence. Lil Peep’s continuing rise is testament to the timeless appeal of introspection. Whichever genres you hyphenate, life will always be unfair.