![]() There's a time and place for exploring the question of why "the generation coming up" sees itself in Peep's music and why, perhaps, it speaks to an older generation, but that conversation is better reserved for a piece that isn't packaged as an In Memoriam. Where and how does mental illness play into his legacy? How does that inform his music and both his personas-his on-stage/artist-to-fan one and his private, personal, and familial one, which has been noted, by those who knew his private life, wasn't all drugs, glum, and depression. Lil Peep deserves better than being remembered in such a navel-gazing way. The world's going to end, so let's just let them have their fun, get fucked up, and maybe learn to appreciate the art they're making in an attempt to make sense of a world that is, again, ending anyway. Peep is in there, but only tangentially his presence (and death) serves as a launching point for the writer to muse over how the younger generation of artists "never got the memo that hip-hop was dead or rock was dead or anything was dead." How sweet is it these kids keep persisting in the face of unconsequential genre death. Instead, there are many paragraphs musing over smoking hash (the "wonderfully redolent brown shit" that "at some point spent time in a nervous person's butthole on an international flight") and correspondence with a former college professor-turned-buddy who happened to be friends with Peep's family, whose academic success gets highlighted before Peep's. Out of all the nearly 5,000 words that make up Sullivan's eulogy, only a third is dedicated to Peep himself. It should be noted that JJS is a generally strong and certainly influential journalist and author. John Jeremiah Sullivan's Lil Peep in memoriam for GQ does not do that. Knowing the person helps in relaying intimate details, so as not to rely solely on anecdotes or assumptions in lieu of actually knowing the deceased, having a deep familiarity with their life and work, and humility about your lack of firsthand knowledge, is essential.įor culture critics and music journalists, the death of Lil Peep (real name: Gustav Åhr) presented a bit of a challenge: How does one honor an artist whose rapid ascent within the industry was just beginning to transform into a larger-than-life career, but whose impact on his massive, tight-knit fan base had already become immeasurable? Well, with tenderness, some resolve, and without over-intellectualizing the events in an effort to not take away from the raw emotion a death as tragic as Peep's was at the age of 21. Pathos and, of course, empathy are required to make clear the importance of the lost life. There is no single right way to eulogize someone, but there's definitely a wrong way.
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