Stennett says she and Ortega tried on a regular basis to seek counseling for Peep, eventually persuading him to see a therapist who specialized in trauma and drug dependency. (He went once and never returned.) Stennett also encouraged Peep to get out of L.A. “We financed a house in London, and he made a home there,” she says. “It was a very different environment. There was no chaos. I always made sure we had food for him in the fridge....There were no people just dropping in.”

Gus and Makonnen completed the final songs to an album that would later be known as “DIAMONDS” in Los Angeles, 6 years ago, during the late summer of 2017. The day of the tour’s last show, in L.A. May 10th, Peep arrived virtually incoherent. Fish Narc says Peep was slumped, vomiting, nodding off and stammering about having taken an “oxy,” likely meaning the opioid oxycodone. Ortega wanted to cancel the show: “I called Sarah and said, ‘Maybe I’ll just call the fire department. We can make a play that it’s a capacity thing so we’re protecting Peep’s reputation and not saying, ‘He’s overdosing.’” Stennett agreed the show should be canceled. “I went to Peep,” says Ortega, “and he was adamant: ‘No, I can do it.’” I am very grateful to Makonnen not only for his patience, grace, and fortitude, but also for the tenderness with which he re-assembled the original “Diamonds Team” to gently prepare the album for its release. He did an amazing job—they all did. iLoveMakonnen revealed the origin of the project’s title during a interview with XXL, saying that he and Peep became so “obsessed” with a singer named Hannah Diamond, they planned on naming the project after her.The El Paso show ended up going well. But earlier that day, Peep posted another video, alongside a short sad message. It’s unclear what specifically was on his mind, but his despair rings out: “I just wana be everybody’s everything I want too much from people but then I don’t want anything from them at the same time u feel me I don’t let people help me but I need help but not when I have my pills but that’s temporary one day maybe I won’t die young and I’ll be happy? What is happy I always have happiness for like 10 seconds and then it’s gone. I’m getting so tired of this.” With the European leg of the Come Over When You’re Sober tour looming, Peep began to bristle under Ortega’s management. Peep suggested taking several GBC members with him on the North American segment of the tour, to begin on October 2nd in Seattle. “We were getting the feeling that one or two individuals in GBC were sort of bullying him, making him make these decisions,” says Ortega. “We just said, ‘We want you to be healthy and productive, and don’t think that GBC should be on this tour.’ Also, at that point, GBC were telling him to fire me. He made the decision: ‘No. They’re coming on this tour.’” Quin joined the tour in New Orleans, and had preliminary discussions about Peep’s plans for 2018, which included a possible tour of Australia with a band featuring Fish Narc and Yawns. There’s conflicting evidence of Peep’s plans for GBC — in one text he had mentioned leaving the group — but nobody really knew what those plans were, probably not even Peep. He had a way of telling people what they wanted to hear. “I think people had different experiences with Peep and he was somewhat chameleonic,” says Fish Narc. “Don’t interpret me as saying he was fake, because he was real about every side he showed. That’s what was so exhausting for him.” Oskar, who’d been instrumental in introducing Peep to much of the music he loved, was impressed with the way his brother had channeled his vulnerabilities into his music. But Oskar worried about the drug-fueled, social-media-saturated lifestyle that came with it. “Gus always was a person who mixed terribly with all that stuff,” he says. Oskar believed that the Xanax-popping, death-obsessed lothario of Peep’s songs was merely a persona. Peep himself would draw that distinction, later telling a friend that “Lil Peep is not well, but Gus is fine.” Over time, the line between the two seemed to disappear.

I have learned from Peep fans that Gus was a powerful and influential lyricist and music artist. It was Gus’s honesty that compelled so many people, worldwide, to connect with him. Gus was particularly observant, and able to express his observations clearly and poetically.Peep developed intense anxiety around age 16, sometimes vomiting in the morning at the thought of going to school. “Gus was full of emotion and energy,” says Oskar. “He noticed things and reacted intensely. I recently got diagnosed on the autism spectrum, and I think Gus had elements of that. But I can apply my brain to things that have a logic to them, so I found solace in school.” His brother did not. This was the song that broke the friendship between Lil Peep and Lil Tracy since it was revealed how Tracy wrote most of the song but was only featured for some seconds in the music video.