LiL PEEP
Crybaby

LA RECENSIONE

"Listen to Crybaby by Lil Peep and you'll reconsider Trap music in a positive light"

This phrase, which has been incessantly repeated to me by a dear friend, is in my opinion the most fitting phrase for this mixtape by the now late trapper Lil Peep.

Trap music and I had a rather difficult relationship, primarily based on the prejudices that many Italian trappers had indirectly instilled in me, and I never thought that this musical genre could actually be so valid and profound. I had always labeled it as the silly, but egotistical little brother of rap. And it took the mixtape of a boy who died very young under circumstances still not entirely clear to change my mind.

Lil Peep, the boy who wanted to become Kurt Cobain. Raised in a well-off environment, but without a father figure, he took refuge in his room for most of his life. Zero friends (a few actually, but all met online), a deep bond with his mother, and a total inability to connect with the outside world. Closed in his room, he played video games and especially listened to and composed music, a lot of music. He began to have a fair amount of success in the Underground thanks to SoundCloud, and besides various mixtapes, released his first album "Come Over when you're Sober". The album would be released and achieve success, but Peep would not have time to enjoy it. He would be found dead just a few months after its release. A cocktail of drugs and psychotropics.

Today, it is one of his mixtapes that we will talk about. Crybaby.

Crybaby is an extremely sincere work, with a melancholy and sadness that leaves one bewildered even after several listens. This album is the vehicle used by a boy to describe all his difficulties and his complete inability to feel comfortable in a world that did not belong to him. A boy raised on the likes of Nirvana, willing to do anything to be the new Kurt Cobain, and perhaps better than anyone else, he could be his spiritual heir. This is not about music made "to make money", nor about music created at a table to end up in the charts, but music created by a person who had everything and had nothing. A person who behaved like a Rockstar on stage only to retreat to his room to cry as soon as he got home.

I don't want to describe the album in a technical way (there are people much more competent than I am to do so), but I am writing this review only to invite you, in case you have certain prejudices against trap music as I did, to reconsider by listening to this little gem of recent years.

"How Did I find you? I'll be inside and I'm making music to cry to"