![]() And, although his music grapples with difficult subjects-death, isolation, hopelessness, drug abuse, romantic torment-his songwriting instincts were decidedly pop. ![]() He was an honest person.” “Come Over When You’re Sober, Part 2,” like Peep’s previous releases, is uncanny in how it melds the deeply familiar and the strangely futuristic. ![]() At the listening session, Womack described this well: “In a way, his emo-rap, or emo-trap, or alternative-rock music style represents this strange transformation-a kind of mutation of music genres. A Gen Z savant, his sensibility was inherent, organic, never calculated. Peep’s music is difficult to characterize, because he seemed not to have an understanding of genre boundaries. Those handling his work have chosen to honor that quality, without gussying it up to make him a cartoon. Death was not a fascination or a stylistic conceit but an all-encompassing, almost soothing aspect of his music. Part of what made Peep’s work so tantalizing, and also so difficult to wrestle with, was how placid he could be when facing the concept of death. “I wonder who you’ll fuck when I die,” Peep sings on “16 Lines,” an exaggeratedly languid song that sees the artist in a drug haze, speaking about death as an imminent inevitability. If Peep’s music was defined by its nihilism and morbidity, the new album makes no attempt to break from that: nearly every song is an eerie harbinger of what came to pass. “This is the album Gus would have wanted.” The version of “Come Over When You’re Sober, Part 2” played during the event, in keeping with Peep’s aversion to unnatural collaboration, had no features across its eleven tracks-a significant gesture, given how many major artists have expressed adoration of his work. “Well, I feel very proud of what Columbia Records has done,” she said. “What do you do when a young artist dies long before his time, leaving behind a legacy of finished and unfinished work, and a legion of heartbroken fans?” she asked. Addressing the crowd, Womack, who is petite, bookish, and wry, read from a set of printed pages in her hand. In one of her few public statements about Peep’s music, Peep’s mother, an elementary-school teacher named Liza Womack, took the microphone before the album was played. For many, Columbia’s release of the new record was, even more than an act of generosity, a business proposition, one that suggested the exploitation of a young, promising artist’s legacy.Īt the party, Columbia, along with Peep’s friends and family, took great care to work against those assumptions. Collaboration with major artists-especially in the form of guest features-is, today, the fast track to success, but Peep was notably fastidious about whom he chose to work with and how he released his music. ![]() Before his death, Lil Peep had taken an independent route to stardom, releasing his music with little help from the massive industry infrastructure that tried to court his business. It was part ceremony, part homage, part corporate schmoozefest.īut the event was also framed as a teachable moment about the concept of the posthumous album. Speeches were made by a label representative and Lil Peep’s management, and images of Peep-with his copious hand and face tattoos, his drowsy demeanor-were projected around the room, as guests mingled and listened to the album. On the surface, it was a typical major-label event: hosted in an intimate, dimly lit downtown space, there was free wine and beer for the journalists who attended, along with swag bags and snacks, Peep marshmallow candies among them. Last month, Columbia Records hosted a listening session for “Come Over When You’re Sober, Part 2,” the posthumous album from Lil Peep, the rapper and singer who died tragically, last year, of a drug overdose at age twenty-one.
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