Honoring Lil Peep’s legacy with our first-ever SoundCloud Culture Award

To shift culture is to dismantle what’s considered normal in order to create progress and a better future for everyone else. But change, by definition, goes against the grain. It’s painful. And to be someone cracking open the status quo, you probably have to be okay with being different. You also have to be internally-driven, brilliant and exceptionally brave. 

Lil Peep had all of these qualities. And while he may have departed the physical earth on November 15, 2017, the young star created a lasting cultural presence through his music. Peep revived and reclaimed a genre (emo rap, rock and all its offshoots), spurred a mass adoption of the #AlternativeRock tag, and is still one of the top-played artists in the history of SoundCloud with more than 1B streams and counting. And due to his prolific nature as an artist, and with the support of his family and collaborators, Lil Peep has continued to release posthumous projects that have topped the Billboard charts. 

Lil Peep’s legacy lives on every time someone plays his tracks, but in the week leading up to the release of his latest album “Everybody’s Everything” and documentary by the same name (both out today), we were able to celebrate the impact he’s made in a meaningful way. 

Last Wednesday, we hosted an intimate album preview event alongside Peep’s close collaborators and label in LA for the 19-track curated collection of fan favorites and unreleased songs. And yesterday, prior to the screening of “Everybody’s Everything” in NYC, we presented Peep’s mother Liza the first-ever SoundCloud Culture Award to honor the authentic, indelible mark that her son left on his fans and the future of music. Looking ahead to 2020, we’re planning on giving this award to more creators who have made an outstanding creative impact on music or audio culture. But today, it’s all about Lil Peep. 

Stream Peep’s career-spanning project “Everybody’s Everything” out now on SoundCloud.