For my analysis of a specific piece of music I have chosen to investigate and analyse ‘HELLBOY’ by Lil Peep. This mixtape came out in September of 2016 and was promoted with two singles, ‘girls’ and ‘move on, be strong’; it is composed in the style of emo rap with clear pop punk, alternative rock, and trap influences. In 2019 ‘HELLBOY’ was ranked number 193 in Pitchfork’s ‘The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s’, showing its evident influence.
Lil Peep, real name Gustav Ahr, was an American rapper who was a pioneer of the emo rap genre and was a leading figure on this scene, he has continued to be a key figure in this genre even after his death in 2017 at the age of 21, even being called ‘his generation’s Kurt Cobain’ in a Rolling Stone article. His intensity and brutal honesty within his lyrics spoke to a lot of people, and when paired with the, at the time, entirely new production of combining typically emo rock elements with trap and rap characteristics, his music became a groundbreaking force, pioneering a new genre of music that has since been popularised.
I have chosen to analyse this particular mixtape because I think that it is very technically interesting and there is a lot to explore pertaining to the technical, compositional, aesthetic and conceptual themes and aspects. This mixtape was one of the first of the emo rap genre, with a distinctive production and vocal style which hadn’t really been heard before. This album was also a defining piece within Lil Peep’s evolution as a musician, being his longest cohesive project released at the time. Within my analysis I plan to explore the production techniques used as well as the technology which was employed in the making of this mixtape; I also plan to explore the innovation which came about, in part because of this album, of the sad rapper, which has since become a new way of self expression in popular music and has reframed how masculinity is typically treated within the rap genre.
The following are the resources and references I shall be using throughout my analysis:
https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/
https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/lil-peep-tragedy-torment-804686/
https://www.gq.com/story/lil-peep-hellboy-mixtape-making-of/amp
Palattella, Nina. Emo Rap and Collective Despair in Adolescent America, 2020 https://etd.ohiolink.edu/apexprod/rws_etd/send_file/send?accession=ksuhonors1587048361192438&disposition=inline
Pejrolo, Andrea. Creative Sequencing Techniques for Music Production, Taylor & Francis Group, 2011
Russ, Martin. Sound Synthesis and Sampling, Taylor & Francis Group, 2008
Lellis, Carlos. Music Production: Recording: A Guide for Producers, Engineers and Musicians, 2013