Born Gustav Elijah Åhr to white Harvard graduate parents, in suburban Pennsylvania of all places, Lil Peep stormed the independent music scene with his own brand of “Mumble Rap,” a genre which has been defined by its unlimited amount of genre mashups and has its melodic flows and indecipherable lyrics mixed in with a thematic consciousness about anxiety, depression and being a millennial.
At some point in Sebastian Jones and Ramez Silyan’s thoroughly watchable doc about the late rapper, you start to realize that this depressed kid, despite all the rabid praise that he has been receiving, is headed down a destructive path. If you don’t know the story, on November 17th, 2017, Lil Peep was found dead due to a drug overdose in the back of his tour bus outside the Tucson, Arizona venue where he’d been scheduled to perform.
The film barely scratches on what was, by all accounts, an addiction to drugs; his body tested positive for everything, from cannabis and cocaine to Tramadol, benzos, and oxycodone. No, what Jones and Silyan’s doc would rather have their narrative concentrate on is what led to that; the rough childhood, an abusive father completely abandoning the family, as well as Peep’s struggles with anxiety and depression and how his naivety led him to allow the people around him to take advantage of his accelerating fame.
“Everybody’s Everything” is a requiem of sorts, albeit on paper it looks like a familiar account of the rise and fall sagas we’ve come to know very well when it comes to musicians who left us all-too-early in their careers (Joni, Jimi, Amy). However, this story is different, using a millennial-driven setting of social media and fame to hone down its message. It’s also a historical account of an impeccable talent who bared his heart and soul in nakedly honest lyrics and was part of a counter-culture movement which signified the immense disassociation many of today’s youths feel, the sense of isolation which becomes problematic once prescribed and non-prescribed drugs come into the mix. What makes this doc so thoroughly touching is that you can feel Peep crying for help in every frame.
The short version: "Woman Unknown" was a compromise. The jury deadlocked over "Possible Love" and "NAZA," not able to com to terms, fell back on their #3, May el-Toukhy's film.