Other rappers need to look at that and realise it’s not healthy. There are artists who made good music for three years and then they died. “There are rappers who were making incredible music that was giving millions of young people hope, but now they’re dead and they can’t help anybody. “There’s a kid dying every weekend, and artists too,” he reflects soberly. New Jersey producer Clams Casino worked with both Lil Peep and Mac Miller at pivotal points in their careers, and has witnessed first hand how problematic drug use has crept into rap culture. It’s a view perhaps backed up by this decade’s deaths of Lil Peep and Mac Miller, who both accidentally overdosed on the opioid fentanyl by taking black market Xanax pills, as well as Kanye West’s claims that being “ strung out” on opioids fuelled many of his mental health issues. Yet following the shock death of Juice WRLD – who last week, aged just 21, reportedly consumed a fatal dose of percocet on his private jet, and was later described by his mother, Carmella Wallace, as having long “battled with prescription drug dependency” – some are asking whether rap culture’s ties to opioids and benzodiazepines is becoming a serious problem. If Future is rapping about pissing codeine then people will want to imitate him as he’s the king.” If LeBron wears Jordans then everyone wants to buy those sneakers, and it’s the same with rap. “At one point, you were looked at as crazy and completely discredited if you were addicted to drugs, but now it’s cool to be barred out. He produces songs for Schoolboy Q, Meek Mill, and Lil Xan the latter a rapper who made his name, quite literally, through his links with drugs, and someone Fu considers to be one of his “best friends”. “It’s wild because in the 1980s and 1990s it was attractive to be the entrepreneurial dope dealer, but now it’s cooler for rappers to be the actual drug addicts it’s a whole different flip,” says 25-year-old producer DJ Fu. Meanwhile, Drake, still arguably the biggest rapper on the planet, nonchalantly referenced taking Xans to help him get to sleep on one of the biggest rap songs of the decade. It isn’t uncommon to see rappers dribbling and falling asleep during interviews, or enthusiastically posting pictures with prescription pills on the tip of their tongue on Instagram (as Lil Peep did just hours before fatally overdosing on his tour bus). And this is mirrored by the sound of the music itself, which has inherited slow, spaced-out drums and subdued bass, as rappers channel the numbing effects of the Xan bars they’ve just ingested via sleepy vocals and mumbled, melancholic lyrics. Opioid-based drugs like lean (a potentially dangerous concoction created by combining codeine cough syrup with Sprite and hard candy) and Percocet, as well as benzodiazepines like Xanax, are more likely to be referenced on a hit song than weed or alcohol (Future’s gargantuan 2016 hit “ Mask Off” was literally built around a chorus where the word Percocet is repeated over and over). Their impact is particularly evident in the world of rap. Fast-forward to the 2010s, and it’s opioids that now have a grip over some of music’s biggest stars. In the 1960s and 1970s, LSD and heroin helped musicians break on through to the other side, while cocaine gave 1980s pop music its turbo charge. Explore the decade on our interactive timeline here, or head here to check out all our features.Įvery decade has a drug that infiltrates music. As a chaotic decade comes to a close, we're speaking to the people who helped shape the last ten years and analysing the cultural shifts that have defined them. But we also added an archive that we will add to regularly so visitors to our site can see some of Gus’s artifacts to get to know him better, as a person.Deep fakes, influencers, viral fashion – we live in a world unrecognisable from the one we stood in ten years ago. We wanted to make beautiful designs and things for people wear, skate on, and generally “flex” to show their support for Gus. You connected with him because he told you that he was like you, and he expressed feelings like the ones you have. We felt that Gus’s fans-both current and future, would welcome the chance to get to know him a little better. So, to honor him, we created this website. Gus was particularly observant, and able to express his observations clearly and poetically. It was Gus’s honesty that compelled so many people, worldwide, to connect with him. I have learned from Peep fans that Gus was a powerful and influential lyricist and music artist. This website is run by Gus’s mom and brother. This is the official website of the Estate of Gustav Elijah Ahr, who came to be known by his fans as “Lil Peep.”
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