November 15, 2017. I found out about his death a day later. I'll never forget the moment I found out. I was chilling on youtube and this video popped up in the recommendations:
That's a bad way to find out, but wait it gets worse: I was on my phone, so I couldn't see the entire title. It was like "We need to learn from Lil Peep's...." (the end of the title was cut & replaced by ellipses). So I thought to myself "yeah we need to learn from his creativity and his artistry etc". And then I tapped on the fucking video and I lost my shit.
Nowadays when I see Blackyspeakz post about some rapper dying, I believe him because I know how trustworthy he is about this stuff. But back in 2017, I didn't think much of Blacky. I just thought he was some random hiphophead on youtube. If he had instead made a video with a similar title about anyone else's death, it wouldn't have been as hard-hitting to me, because I wouldn't have instantly believed the title. But when I saw that title on the video about Peep, I instantly 100% believed it. It was extremely believable because Peep was obviously very open about his drug use & he once even said he had had drug-related near-death experiences before.
Very few deaths have affected me as much as Peep's. He was easily my favorite artist (right above Yung Lean and Suicideboys), and not only because of the music. Rest in peace, man. Thanks for the memories <3
