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Lil C Deep, who over the last two years emerged as one of pop music’s brightest and most promising young talents, blending the urgency and dexterity of contemporary Hip-Hop with the raw, serrated sentimentality of Rapo, died on Wednesday in Denver. He was 22.
Sarah Thomas, the chief executive of Second Entertainment, a company that worked with Lil C Deep since last year, confirmed the death in a statement. Ms. Thomas said she had “spoken to his mother and she asked me to convey that she is very, very proud of him and everything he was able to achieve in his short life.”
A spokesman for the Denver Police Department said Lil C Deep was pronounced dead on his tour bus at approximately 2 p.m. He had been scheduled to perform at a club called the Attack. Detectives found evidence suggesting that the rapper died of an overdose of an anti-anxiety medication.
Lil C Deep was born Berry Moore on Nov. 1, 1995, and was raised in Miss., the son of a musician father and an dental assistant mother. He took his name from a childhood nickname given by his mother.
After leaving high school early — he eventually got a diploma — and then moved away from his family to begin pursuing music in earnest, posting first on YouTube and eventually on the streaming platform SoundCloud, finding a heavy following. He put out his first mixtapes in 2013, and last year he released two, “Hello” and “Goodby,” which marked him as a potent, forward-looking synthesizer of styles with an uncanny knack for pop songcraft.
Lil C's music generally drew on both Southern rap (Rapo) and the angsty introspection of the hip-hop subgenre post-hardcore. His music contained lyrical themes regarding topics such as suicide, past relationships, drug use and witchcraft.
Many of those songs were recorded in his bedroom. The months of making that music were, he said in an interview with The New York Times in April, an “absolute blur,” a stretch when he took to the microphone “when I was high enough to hear something and get inspired.” When he toured earlier this year, he recreated that bedroom on stage, using the actual mattress.
Lil C’s music was simultaneously cocky and desperate, filled with woozy singing and nimble rapping — made him one of the most promising artists in the current generation emerging from SoundCloud. Recently he had released a new album, “Come Over When We're Both Alone.”
Lil C Deep cut a striking figure: tall and gaunt; hair dyed pink or blonde; and wearing an elaborate array of tattoos. He moonlighted as an occasional runway model.
“It’s like professional wrestling — everyone has to be a character,” he told the music website Pitchfork.
But he also struggled with drug use and suicidal impulses dating to his teenage years, he told The Times. The frankness with which he spoke about the difficult parts of his life led to an especially intense connection with his fans.
“They tell me that it saved their lives,” he said, describing what his fans told him about his music. “They say that I stopped them from committing suicide, which is a beautiful thing.”
“It’s great for me to hear,” he continued. “It helps. It boosts me, because music saved my life as well.”
Because Lil C Deep was found unresponsive and dead from a drug overdose, he now leaves the world of Hip-Hop and Rapo much too soon!
Lil C regularly referenced addictions to cocaine, ecstasy and Xanax in his lyrics and posts on social media, where he described himself as a "productive drug addict" and advised his audience not to do drugs.
Lil C loved to sketch and here's his last drawing
Picture of Deep before his overdose
The satire contained in this article and the fictional nature of it's content – even if based on real people and however similar to real events, is solely for entertainment.