Only three months after the release of his debut album, Lil Peep—the emo rapper who grew a massive YouTube and Soundcloud following—has died at the age of 21, as The New York Times reports:

Sarah Stennett, the chief executive of First Access Entertainment, a company that worked with Lil Peep last year, confirmed the rapper's death in a statement. Ms. Stennett said she had "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."

Lil Peep was reportedly taken to hospital following an overdose, as The Guardian reports. The rapper posted a video hours before his death explaining he'd taken prescription drugs and other substances. "I'm good, I'm not sick," he said.

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Lil Peep was born Gustav Åhr on November 1, 1996. He was raised by a college professor father and an elementary schoolteacher mother in Long Beach, Long Island. He left high school early for L.A. to pursue a career in music, where his blend of rap with guitars and emotional honesty made him an early internet sensation. For two years he released dozens of tracks online and gained millions of plays, connecting with a young generation captivated by his openness about his depression and drug use.

During a conversation just yesterday with Zane Lowe of Apple Music's Beats 1, the tastemaker told me that Lil Peep represented a trend of musicians in 2017 who created an open dialogue about depression and mental health. "When you have an artist who reflects that like Lil Peep, who has no problem coming out and talking about his anxiety and depression, that continues the dialogue," Lowe said. "I think that's very much in line with the times."

In a tragic interview with Lowe on Apple Music's Beats 1 days before his death, the host, noting Lil Peep's transparency with drugs and anxiety, asked how he's coping with fame.

"If anything, things have gotten worse, probably," Lil Peep said. "Yeah. Things just get worse. Things already get worse and worse and worse every day."

When Lowe asked about how fans react to his lyrics, Peep added, "They tell me all the time that it helps them stay alive, keeps them from committing suicide and stuff like that."

His music marked a new phase in rap, one in which guitars and emotional anxiety took center stage. Artists like Post Malone, Lil Yachty, and Lil Uzi Vert have embraced a punk-rock approach to rap music—repackaging it to sell at the mall. It's like the Blink-182 era of pop-rap music. As Pitchfork wrote of Lil Peep in a lengthy exploration of the resurgence of rap rock:

Whenever there is emotional catharsis, there is also the possibility of tenderness and hope. On Lil Peep's "Awful Things," he begs a woman to tell him all the worst things about her day, because it helps him connect; his stage name is a derivative of Little Bo Peep, a nickname his mother gave him when he was little; and he's come out as bisexual and regularly takes homophobes to task on Twitter.

Though his face tattoos and pink hair and Good Charlotte-like flow may have been jarring, Peep represented a fascinating new era of the genre—an artist who understood the challenges of his generation and wasn't afraid to rap about them.

From: Esquire US