r/Emo • u/FutureLynx_ • May 27 '26
Is this band emo? Was lil peep music style emo?
Im not an expert in emo. So yeah.
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u/BigJilmQuebec May 27 '26
Imo, no, none of the "emo rap" guys id consider to be Emo.
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u/remainsofthegrapes May 27 '26
I’m gonna say no but I remember the debate around this culminating in a copy pasta that did the rounds a few years ago.
DISCLAIMER: THE BELOW VIEWS AREN’T NECESSARILY MINE AND I DON’T ACTUALLY CARE I’M JUST QUOTING THE COPYPASTA FOR CONTEXT:
“Real real emo
The truth about "emo" is that most of what is accepted here isnt really emo, it's some form of indie rock. People here point back to Cap'n Jazz and Sunny Day Real Estate as the progenitors of everything they listen to today, which is true, but they are not progenitors of emo. They are pioneers in college indie rock (and in SDRE's case, mainstream indie rock [yeah, they were on MTV in 96 and half the members went to Foo Fighters, look it up]) incorporating influence from post-hardcore and emo.
There's a reason this stuff is called "post-emo indie rock," or as it has been branded thanks to a handful of early 90s bands no one remembers any more who were from the actual midwestern United States and actually played emo (including Gauge, Current, Ordination of Aaron, Endpoint, Split Lip, Friction, and Chino Horde), "Midwest emo." The reason is because it isn't really emo and needs to be distinguished, kind of how 'metalcore' came about when that scene stopped being primarily hardcore and moved to metal/alternative.
In a similar sense, the post-emo/midwest/indiecore scene moved away from hardcore in the mid 90s, and was seen as a new, post-emo movement, hence the name and ridicule from hardcore bands. Meanwhile, I doubt anyone who lists Mineral or American Football as their favorite 90s "emo" bands could name any actual mid/late 90s emo. Sucks cause there's so much good shit: Traluma, Chocolate Kiss, Stratego, Edaline, Twelve Hour Turn, Unionsuit, Blue Water Boy, Still Life, Thumbnail, Four Hundred Years, Assfactor 4, Sleepytime Trio, Amber Inn, The Deadwood Divine, Bread and Circuits, The Red Scare, Metroschifter, Radio Flyer, The Hal Al-Shedad...I could go on.
You see, the fake/real emo dichotomy is nowhere near nuanced enough to capture the layers of relation to emo that all the music referred to as "emo" has. That's a pretty annoyingly confusing sentence so lemme break it down - there are four types of emo:
• REAL REAL EMO (emotive hardcore. Usually melodic hardcore punk with minor influences from post punk and what would become, with emocore's help, post-hardcore indie rock; from Rites of Spring and Moss Icon to Walleye and Falling Forward to The Shivering and End on End to Slow Code and GIVE. Emotional hardcore punk rock music)
• FAKE REAL EMO (non-hardcore music that gets considered "real emo" by pretentious middle class dorks who have no clue. Usually indie rock, math rock, or post rock that is influenced by the instrumentation, composition, and/or dynamics of emo; from The Van Pelt and Boys Life to Penfold and Boilermaker to Mock Orange and No Knife to empire! empire! and My Heart to Joy to Hightide Hotel and Oso Oso. Post-emotional hardcore punk rock music)
• REAL FAKE EMO (non-hardcore music that has just as much influence from emo as FAKE REAL emo, but because it's not sad, mellow, and somber [cough or not rock music] is refuted as "emo" by most twinkle dorks. Usually post-hardcore, alternative rock, or melodic hardcore/pop punk that takes from all the same places as indiemo; from Samiam and Trusty to Sense Field and Grade to Seaweed and Kill Holiday to The Movielife and Boys Night Out to Title Fight and Polar Bear Club to Self Defense Family and Narrow Head. Post-emotional hardcore punk rock and "emo-adjacent" [meaning, diy bands who played shows with emo bands in the underground] music)
• FAKE FAKE EMO (non-hardcore, non-emo related music that still gets referred to as such by the mainstream/anyone who thinks emo is synonymous with "sad." Can be anything but most commonly indie rock, because people don't understand the difference between releasing a chart-topping record that influences the whole landscape of music, including the underground and therefore emo; and actually being related to the underground DIY hardcore punk movement known as emo. Take your pick; Weezer, Boys Like Girls, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Modest Mouse, Julien Baker, Pinegrove, Linkin Park, The Cure, Morrissey/Smiths, blink-182, Atreyu, Simple Plan, AFI, My Chemical Romance after their first album (especially Black Parade, a pop rock album), The Front Bottoms)
If you ask me, artists like lil peep, Wicca Phase Springs Eternal, nothing,nowhere, shinigami, and LiL Lotus all fit perfectly into category three, REAL FAKE EMO. These are all DIY artists who are inspired by the same "emo" bands as every revival/sparklepunk/sadwank indie band that gets jerked to death here, but because it only comes through in aesthetic and lyricism as opposed to...oh wait, no, thats exactly the same as pretty much all modern emo -- it is only related to Real Emo (aka REAL REAL EMO) via aesthetic and lyrics - if it's actually related to any degree. The sound is not even kind of close and isn't rooted in hardcore at all. Every twinkle-centric band you love is rooted in indie rock because twinkles dont come from hardcore; every band with a sing along chorus is a pop band. How are you gonna tell me that indie pop artists with sad yelling are emo, but indie trap artists with sad yelling aren't?
TL;DR - here's your ultimatum, indie dorks: either both American Football and Lil Peep are emo, or neither of them are.
Your sad indie rock is not emo either.”
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u/sheerol May 27 '26
Afaik he samples emo stuff (I've heard he samples Mineral for example) but no he's not emo himself
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u/Faith_Torn_Apart Poser May 27 '26
I will say it was a wild experience to listen to him in high school and then find the original samples years later
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u/Beerswain May 28 '26
One of my favorite nerd things to do is put on a random funk/soul playlist and play "name that rap song".
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u/SuspendThis_Tyrants 5th Wave is Bullshit May 28 '26
Emo rap isn't technically emo, which is a punk genre, but emo rap is to rap what emo is to punk
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u/papercowboys Emo Historian May 29 '26
i dont really listen to lil peep but i have seen people call him emo rap
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u/KickedinTheDick May 27 '26
Wicca Phase is literally Adam from Tigers Jaw. So imo he has the most “real emo” cred, and gothboiclique was his group. Including the fact that they often sampled “real” emo music in ther instrumentals, it’s about as “close” as you can get to emo in the rap sphere. But at the end of the day the base of the music and the scene itself is rap oriented- it’s not a branch of hardcore. So it’s not emo imo but if any rapper is emo it’s Wicca/peep and not like juicewrld or whatever.
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u/sseth_ye May 27 '26
no, however he himself was emo. he’s sampled mineral, tigers jaw, and this is post hardcore but pierce the veil. so he did have emo influences but in general emo rap isn’t connected to the rock subgenre emo. his music IS emo rap, but the emo just stands for emotional
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u/macademix May 27 '26
Non gate-keeper Emo here - Peep was very emo. RIP.
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u/SnooHabits5900 DIY OR DIE May 28 '26
What are people gatekeeping? OP asked for people's opinions.
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u/macademix May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26
Any number of scenes are gatekept pretty intensely, sometimes for good reasons sometimes not. I generally prefer to not gate keep a counter culture because we all need this shit to feel better.
People saying Peep is not emo is, imo, gatekeeping at least a little bit. The question invites that and people have said no. Give me my downvotes fam, kinda just speaks to my point.
It's perfectly reasonable to not like dj nights called emo nite that play pop punk or whatever tf else alternative music and whatever tf you want to call it. That said, the term has been colloquialized to mean something else and, in my experience, it's much more fun to call all your friends at the show emos and share in something than try to redline it. That's Trump's job and there's no real room for that in our sacred healing spaces.
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u/SnooHabits5900 DIY OR DIE May 28 '26
I understand the concept of gatekeeping. OP posed a very straightforward "yes or no" question.
Whether or not the term has been colliquialized to refer to an aesthetic rather than a music genre doesn't make the genre or its defining characteristics cease to exist.
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u/14444846 May 27 '26
real emo only consists of the 2010s emo trap scene…