He’s got all sorts of ugliness in his past, including a sex crime conviction involving an underage girl and the requisite gang connections.īut because 6ix9ine and Lil Peep are the same age and combined crazily colorful hair with astonishingly ugly face tattoos, my dumb old man brain lumps them together in the same category as Lil Xan, a rapper I only learned about when he started beefing with comedian, actor and musician Jon Daly. The rapper known as 6ix9ine, on the other hand, seems to be a real piece of shit. Peep seemed like an essentially sensitive and decent human being who was in a lot of pain. What side ultimately won? Well, let’s just say I’m not pumping a lot of Lil Peep in my iPod while I’m following “Weird Al” Yankovic on tour. The “get off my lawn” side of my personality, on the other hand, found it ridiculous that I would even consider venturing into the world of contemporary music for the sake of a dude named Lil Peep with crazy hair and shitty facial tattoos. The empathetic, adventurous side of me thought Lil Peep’s music might be worth checking out. Lil Peep, who died recently of a Xanax/Fentanyl overdose at 21, seemed like a hell of an interesting guy, an out bisexual whose moody, intimate music expressed his profound depression and chronicled his ultimately losing battle with the prescription pill addiction that would soon take his life. But nothing has made me feel quite as old, out of touch and old-man cranky as the emergence of Lil Peep, Lil Xan and 6ix9ine. I’m a very old forty-one so there are lots of cultural and music movements whose appeal completely escapes me. You even find this instinct in what are traditionally considered music's most sophisticated and informed fans, Juggalos. We fetishize and romanticize the music and pop culture of our youth and have an innate tendency to see what comes after as inherently inferior and inauthentic. We all become those people whether we want to or not. It was a vow that was impossible to keep. I would never be one of those dreary scolds who look at youth culture as something that does not need to be understood to be loudly condemned. I would never become one of those crusty, reactionary fuddy-duddies who look at contemporary youth culture with equal parts disgust and purposeful incomprehension. Like all kids, I vowed never to be that lame. I vividly remember a cousin cackling at the ridiculousness of the lyrics of “Rapper’s Delight” and the idea that a grown man would call himself Big Bank Hank. I’m so old that I remember older relatives expressing open-mouthed bewilderment and amusement at the very first rap artists to break through into the mainstream.
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