Movie Review : Everybody's Everything (2019)
If you’re not explicitly interested in them, SoundCloud rappers kind of all blend together. They’re stereotypically white, sport multiple odd-looking face tattoos and sing about substance abuse a lot. Part of it is a scene thing (SoundCloud rap is the sound of drug- addled teenagers) and part of it is the influence of SoundCloud rap’s first superstar Lil Peep. But like any influential artist, Peep has been imitated only superficially. The documentary on his life Everybody’s Everything is not really about his music, but it shows the nuances and complexities that made him stand out.
The most fascinating thing you learn in Everybody’s Everything is that Lil Peep isn’t the product of a poor, white trash upbringing like many of his contemporaries. He is the son of a mysterious, rigid-looking college professor who walked out of his family and an artistic-minded, extremely supportive first grade teacher. So, the way he looks (face tattoos, atypical clothes) and the company he kept were expressions of how he felt inside and not the opposite. I don’t know how true it is since the documentary was sponsored by loved ones, but it’s thought-provoking nonetheless.
Because if emotional support and moral relativism helped turned an anxious kid into an unlikely rap superstar, it also had tragic unintended consequence. According to Everybody’s Everything, what caused Lil Peep’s demise is the insane pressure of success and the provider status it bestowed upon him. Completely free to express himself, young Gustav Ahr created a musical genre, challenged the music industry’s business model, touched millions of people and created for himself a life that he couldn’t quite handle. Make your rethink cheap online inspiration.
It’s somewhat of a shame Everybody’s Everything doesn’t go deeper into Lil Peep’s music. Because he used SoundCloud in order to offer something quite different. Marketing wise, what he sold was the process of creation and not necessarily finished products. Sure, he had a couple hits. But his creative process was interactive, almost collaborative with the audience, which is an idea really, really fucking far removed from record label thinking. Everybody’s Everything only grazes the surface of why Peep was musically and artistically different from the others.
A question I had before watching this documentary was: has death benefited Lil Peep’s legacy? It seems like an unfair question, but dying is usually a great business move for musicians. After watching Everybody’s Everything I can understand why a little better. Peep will now forever be who he was. He will not change, outgrow what he represented or take any artistic left turns. He will forever be a voice for distressed, drug-addled teenagers and his tragic fate will ensure him a form of integrity. So in a way dying did help Lil Peep’s legacy.
I’m sure his mother would rather still have him, but the artistic entity that is Lil Peep will be guaranteed to never go out of style. He will forever represent a sound and a time.
Everybody’s Everything is both entertaining and inspiring. I dare any creative-minded person to watch it and not feel compelled to get to work on something. It also raised interesting questions about the very idea of success versus the reality of it. One person interviewed encapsulated it best: “if you’re the star of the party, everybody will try to give you what you want. Women, drugs, etc.” In a culture where we idealize success and celebrity, a documentary like Everybody’s Everything pertinently questions what the fuck are we doing to our young, tormented creators.
8.1/10
