Everyone has their own music taste, whether it be big artists or a bit more unknown or overlooked artists. Many unknown artists have recently risen to more of a fame status. However, there is one artist who I have enjoyed recently and who I feel people don’t give a chance to listen to. Lots of artists have been inspired by the likes of Bladee (even I was influenced and am starting to make music in my free time).
Benjamin Reichwald (aka. Bladee), is a 30-year-old Swedish music artist most notably from the artist group known as Drain Gang. Bladee is mostly known for a rap style of music, featuring heavy melodic autotune with beautiful melodies. Bladee released his first album in 2014, titled “Gluee”.
Around the years 2019-2020, a style called “hyperpop” seeped its way into the mainstream from the help of TikTok. Many people associate Bladee with hyperpop due to one track from his 2018 album ”Icedancer”. The track is titled “Be Nice 2 Me” and has over 53 million streams to this day. Many people try to label Bladee as a single-genre artist like cloud rap, hyperpop or trap. However, over the years, Bladee has proven this genre-binding wrong.
While most of Bladee’s discography has fallen under cloud rap, he has been releasing many different genres throughout all of his career, even as a kid. When he was younger, Bladee was part of a punk band named Krossad (meaning crushed), with his friend Zak Arogundade also known as Ecco2k, who is also a part of the Drain Gang collective.
Over the years, Bladee was a part of the Stockholm label YEAR0001, collaborating with many artists in the same label such as Varg²™, Nation and Eurohead. These artists are very great producers of trance, house and EDM genres. As of November 8, 2024, Bladee and his friends did something brave by leaving the YEAR0001 label, as they were hardly paying the artists what they deserve.
Recently (within the last 5 years), I have been religiously listening to Bladee and have even gone to his Chicago concert last month. As I listened to his older discography, I realized how much influence it had on other artists’ styles. He even made a recent collab on Charli XCX’s “brat” remix album and has worked with Charli on past albums and single releases.
I believe Bladee is a very influential artist that people should listen to at least once just to see if they may enjoy the diversity of his sound. I even caught my dad listening to Bladee after we got home from the concert. I think many current artists should try to break free from their labeled genre and try to experiment and follow the influence of this great artist.
