Lil Peep's benz truck music video: a Literary Analysis

I want this as a poster

I don't even know where to start with this, so I'm just going to jump in headfirst. Some important things to know: I LOVE music videos. I REALLY love them, and I've probably already said this on here about 10 times, so you know how obsessive I am about it. Up until the 23rd of December 2017, my favourite music video in the world was Yung Lean's Kyoto music video. Then, that night, while staying over at my Aunty's house, I was in bed on my phone, and came across the benz truck music video. This was my first introduction to Lil Peep, and I was in awe. There was something magical and eerie about the whole thing. From that moment on, I was obsessed, and to this day it remains my favourite music video of all time, closely followed by Kyoto, and then Peep's "Girls" one (I need to do an analysis of that too). Here, I will attempt to dissect why I felt those first (literally) awe-some feelings, and why it's so captivating.

So what I've decided is that that eerie magic vibe stems from the elements of the music video that emulate a neo-romantic (specifically neo-gothic) existentialist despair. Basically, he's dead inside. Relatable. And then, on a deeper level, this despair and emptiness is contrasted humorously with the excess and vainglory of the (soundcloud) rap scene. These are the two centres of meaning I'll keep coming back to, and i'm going to try and go through the MV chronologically.

Here's the video, by the way:

The first thing we see is the title card. It says "lil peep" on top and "benz truck" on the bottom, but most importantly, right smack in the middle in the biggest font is "гелик" - Russian for benz truck. On the official iTunes release, the alternative Russian title is there in brackets, and the song as pink Russian subtitles intermittently through it. I LOVE it - it's so cheeky. I thought Peep was Russian at first because of this - turns out he's Swedish. But he has a MASSIVE Russian fanbase, which will be evident just from looking at the comments below this music video, but also through this exchange peep posted on his instagram:

Anyway. The Russian. It's a nod to his massive Russian fanbase, but it's also a nod to why. It's speculated, at least, that the youths of Russia (and other parts of Eastern Europe) are so obsessed because they identify so strongly with this deep empty sense of dread and despair, mostly because of their political climate. It also adds a foreign, alien quality to the music video for people who don't speak Russian and/or aren't familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet. 

Next shot: the CGI of the benz truck logo. If you look carefully into the silver wheel, you can see peep's reflection in it, and the beginning of the beautiful desaturated colour palette throughout the video. Again - that half-dead feeling, where everything's muted. 

The next few shots are just peep with each of the three benz trucks in this video (he shot the video in three different countries and rented a different colour benz truck for each shoot), and the iconic electric bolts added in post by, I presume, either wiggy or mezzy or more likely sus boy. It's beautiful and scary and operatic, almost, emotionally, and again, alien. 

Look how alone he is:

It's captivating. We're also beginning to see that sense of excess, but it's pretty common in rap music videos and lyrics, so it's not something that sticks out as particularly unusual.

It's at this point that he finally starts to rap, and the first verse is incredibly mumbled and muted. It's weird and dead, especially compared to the loud beat (by smokeasac) that to me sounds centripetal, like the rotating spokes of a heavy wheel - perhaps the wheel of a benz truck. The mutedness of his voice is very different in tone to the vainglory of what he's rapping "lil bo peep / with a brand new bitch / in the back of the club / with the gothboiclique / iced out teeth / on an iced out whip / with the limousine tints / so you can suck my dick".

After this first very "pre-mumble", if you will, you hear the GBC tag, the robotic Siri-esque voice announcing "GOTH-BOI-CLIQUE." overhead, and the song starts proper. That tag - I love that tag, and even though it is most definitely not unique to this song, it adds to the alien sci-fi feel. 

The next couple of shots I just wanna put in because he looks so cute.

I've always found it really funny how he wears the Ugg hat over his benz truck cap, and keeps the tag on. Could it be a reference to the hypebeast tradition of keeping the red Off-White tag on? Is it a parody, given that it's just a little paper tag and probably nowhere near the price of a pair of off-white shoes? Maybe, and if so, he's shading a big portion of the underground community he's part of. As he says, "friends switch up when you're in the benz truck". He had proclaimed, a year or so earlier when he was just beginning to get recognition as part of schemaposse, "I could never switch up on my brothers / I put that on my mother, you know I love her". He values relationships over the material, and, ironically, he's making that known here.

Oh - also - the shots in the graveyard are just obvious. Paired with the beautiful pink blossom trees especially.

This next shot is my ABSOLUTE favourite. I'm in awe every time I see it:

I'm pretty sure this is a reference to Michaelangelo's "The Creation of Adam":

This frame in itself has SO many layers of meaning. Probably most obviously, it's a comment on the God complex of SoundCloud rappers (Lil Xan, for example, has said that when he was young, he genuinely thought he was the second coming of Christ, hence his lines "holy son / I'm the chosen one" in "Betrayed"). But, noticeably, a key component of the painting is missing - God himself! I think there's a few things going on here. First, it may be a reference to his absent father. It's also a very existentialist take on religion, in which God has failed us and can't exist, which fits in with the empty dread I was talking about. Lastly, he's suggesting the insubstantiality of that rap God complex I was talking about earlier.

I've shown this shot to a lot of people because I'm so impressed with it, but I've heard a lot of cynical "it's not that deep"s. Sure, they might be entirely right. It's a rap video, after all. But try and pull that pose right now. It's unnatural and awkward, and not something you would do unless you had a specific intention. It's not like raising your arms out in glory. So I do think it's that deep. Also, you can see the exact same "Creation of Adam" reference in another music video Wiggy made for Peep and Tracy, "White Wine":

In the next few shots, there's a lot of Peep turning around and lowering his fur coat to show the giant tattoo that says "EXIT LIFE" across his shoulder blades. This depressive existentialism is carved into his very body. 

By the way, his outfit choice in these shots from England are very significant. He wears this glorious, in-your-face neon green and pink fur coat - but no shirt underneath, only his skinny torso with the rubs sticking out. Again - under all that talk and glorification lurks only the threadbare and deathly. The same line of thought applies to the post-production super-imposition of the skeleton onto Peep's body in the music video - which is also some pretty scary foreshadowing:

I don't really know what to make of the sheep. I'm pretty sure their inclusion was intentional, because I've seen a video of Peep on his hotel bed after the shoot grinning saying they got the sheep. If so, I think it's a direct sheep = blind follower reference, probably again to the superficial rap-money-ice-bitches scene he's surrounded by. It also helps with the alien feel, especially contrasted next to the modern boxy feel of the benz truck.

This next shot, I love so much. Everything about it is off-kilter and weird and alien - from his hair in two pigtails like antennae, to his tatted-out gaunt face, to the beat. And his body movements / little dance harmonises perfectly with the motion of the camera - I have NO IDEA how Wiggy pulled that off, but I'm in awe. 

via GIPHY

It reminds me of the out-of-sync synchronisation in yunggoth's "idk how to kill myself" music video, at 1:30 minutes.

Back to benz truck, at 2:11, you'll notice a very cheeky quick cut between the shot Peep facing the altar in the church and a dedicated shot of the sheep. I wonder what he's saying about religion?

And of course, there's this iconic shot, which is fairly self-explanatory. I love it so much.

The last thing thing I want to talk about is a very, very fleeting shot in the last ten seconds:

He's standing next to a statue of Georgy Zhukov, a Soviet Red Army General and later member of the politburo, on a horse, at Manezhnaya Square in Moscow. (I know this, by the way, because of this very handy but very specific Wikipedia page entitled "List of Equestrian Statues in Russia".) In this tiny, tiny shot, he connects the Russian references - the vainglory of its previous dictators (we all know how that went) - with the vainglory of the rap scene, which he's been exposing the emptiness of throughout the video. The statue's shadow just puts the nail in the coffin.

And if you think this is reading too much into it, just look at this shit (shoutout @gothbiopictures for this info):

That's all I have to say, really. I love music videos and I want to make them.