He said that people would judge him off the way he looked, when he really just wanted to help people out,” says producer Smokeasac, who lived with Peep and a handful of other producers at the Skid Row loft where they made much of the seminal 2016 mixtape Hellboy. “He told me that he saw parts of himself in the character Hellboy. As a heavily tattooed, polarizing underground rapper, the sweet-tempered introvert felt a growing chasm between how he was portrayed and who he was, similar to the way the Mike Mignola superhero’s looks inspire fear even though he just wants to help. He’d loved Hellboy since he was a kid, and felt a kinship with him.
In retrospect, it’s obvious why Lil Peep gravitated to a comic book character who has the appearance of a villain and the soul of a hero.
