Posthumous releases always come with a long list of precautions, doubts, and, more often than not, immense disappointment. While Lil’ Peep’s Come Over When You’re Sober, Pt. 2 has a few moments where the cracks begin to appear, frequent collaborator Smokeasac, who produced the project, achieved the balancing act about as well as he could.
Peep, born Gustav Elijah Åhr, died one year ago at the age of 21. Prior to his death, Lil Peep was at the forefront of the “emo rap” segment existing largely on SoundCloud, which was just beginning to make commercial waves and with him as poster boy. On Come Over When You’re Sober, Pt. 2, his full potential isn’t necessarily realized, but it becomes exponentially more clear what a star he could have been. “Runaway,” in particular, is a near-perfect pop song about navigating a world of backbreaking loneliness, and striking out on your own to both make it, and make it out alive. It’s haunting when Peep coldly states, “I was dying and nobody was there.”
Given the themes of his music and the contentious circumstances that surrounded this long-delayed album, there is some thinking that the music community should do regarding the morals of projecting an artist’s vision without their say. Even with Smokeasac on board, there wasn’t a system of checks in place at Columbia Records that could put a stop to the blind money grab that was “Falling Down,” the collaboration with late rapper XXXTentacion, which was recorded after Peep’s death. Saying that there was tension between the two is putting it lightly, with some of Peep’s Gothboiclique collaborators outright condemning the record.
Lil Peep was a generational talent, and the idea that a feature with questionable intentions was needed to make the project a streaming success is abhorrent. In life, Lil’ Peep rapped about death. In death, his friends and fans are trying to grasp onto whatever strands of life are left.
Score: 🐥🐥🐥 /5
