Lil Peep, YouTube star and rapper dead at 21

Lil Peep, Awful Things

Rising star dead from drug overdose

L'il Peep was bombastic, anarchic, colorful, crazy, talented, vulnerable and lovable even at his worst, and now he is dead.

Born Gustav Åhr, he became Lil Peep, YouTube star and one of the most compelling characters in the queer rap punk intersection is dead at the very young age of 21. Apparently of an overdose of Xanax

The Long Beach, New York native, whose given name was Gustav Åhr, was taken to the hospital after a suspected overdose, according to the Guardian. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital in Tucson, Arizona.

Hours before his death, Lil Peep posted on Instagram about the drugs he had ingested, saying to his growing fan-base, "I took 6 Xanax... I'm good, I'm not sick..."

EL PASO TX TONITE !!!! ITS ALIIIIIIVE!!!!

A post shared by @lilpeep on

He followed that with a post announcing he had taken honey and shrooms.

I just took honey and shrooms

A post shared by @lilpeep on

While on the drugs he wrote:

"I just wana be everybody's everything I want too much from people but then I don't want anything from them at the same time u feel me I don't let people help me but I need help but not when I have my pills but that's temporary one day maybe I won't die young and I'll be happy? What is happy I always have happiness for like 10 seconds and then it's gone. I'm getting so tired of this"

The rapper's heavy drug use was no surprise to his manager, Chase Ortega, who broke the news on his private Twitter account, saying,  “I’ve been expecting this call for a year. Mother fuck.”

CEO of First Access Entertainment, Sarah Stennett, released a statement about his death.

“I am shocked and heartbroken. I do not believe Peep wanted to die, this is so tragic. He had big goals and dreams for the future which he had shared with me, his team, his family and his friends. He was highly intelligent, hugely creative, massively charismatic, gentle and charming. He had huge ambition and his career was flourishing.

"I have spoken to his mother and she asked me to convey that she is very, very proud of him and everything he was able to achieve in his short life. She is truly grateful to the fans and the people who have supported and loved him."

Peep did indeed have a lot to live for. He had recently dropped his first album, and his growing popularity in the music industry for mixing rap and emo was bringing him acclaim.

According to Billboard, Peep's fans loved him for his openness about everything in his drug use to his sexuality as well as his battles with depression.

His career was at the very first blush of its beginning, but he had already been noticed by the New York Times which described him as having "evolved into something like the scene's Kurt Cobain, with several astonishingly gloomy and diabolically melodic releases, and a body that is in constant flux: hair dyed one color after another, an anarchy sign and the word 'crybaby' tattooed on his face."
(their splashy article is a great read on the iconoclastic young man)
Like those of here at Celebrity Cafe, most fans first discovered the hard living performer on Soundcloud, where he was one of its most beloved (and popular) stars.

The outpouring on social media is already overwhelming  -

Stephen Dare and Angela Corey contributed to this article.

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