Cold Visions
Bladee
Year: 2024
Genres: Cloud rap, rage, tread
Descriptors: misanthropic, dark, introspective, male vocalist, humorous, atmospheric, spiritual, addiction, poetic
8/10
Swedish rapper Bladee joins forces with a plethora of previous collaborators, introspecting on his musical career.
This summer marks my 4th year of listening to Bladee (pronounced “Blade”), a feat made far less significant in the face of his 13 year-long musical career. His music has accompanied me through the most significant portion of my adolescence. I’ve listened to it in the car on my way to my SATs, my first job, my high school graduation, and my first day of college. One thing that’s always fascinated me about Bladee’s discography is how clearly it portrays the progression of his self-esteem throughout life, going from the depressive Eversince to the confident and materialistic Working on Dying to the blissfully-redeemed 333. That album came out a week or two before I started listening to him in Summer 2020, and I instantly fell in love with it. Its angelic and whimsical warmth has been carried over to his next 3 albums–The Fool, Crest, and Spiderr. Admittedly, I’d always preferred his more melancholy projects in comparison to these ones, most likely as a reflection of my isolation throughout the pandemic. Thankfully, at this point in his impressively long discography, Bladee released Cold Visions, an introspective reflection on his career that manages to masterfully blend both styles together.
The album’s 30 songs give Bladee plenty of space to ruminate on life–ironically, Bladee turned 30 last month! Some songs express his angst and regret more subtly, while others, like “CAN’T END ON A LOSS (OUTRO),” do not: "I remember being like eighteen, I was thinking I was so fucked up / But I didn't realize that I would become even more fucked up / I'm facing thirty, living dirty / It's fucked up." In addition to reflecting on his age, Bladee muses about other topics such as his drug abuse (“DON’T DO DRUGZ”), his spirituality (“ONLY GOD IS MADE PERFECT”), and his mental health (“END OF THE ROAD BOYZ”). The combination of his serious spiritual reflections with his depressive and materialistic thoughts is a perfect fusion of both the light and dark sides of his discography. Of course, Bladee doesn’t take this album entirely seriously, as demonstrated by quips like "Man I'm stepping on the court / Man you're watching Youtube Shorts" (“ONLY GOD IS MADE PERFECT”) and "I'm him, did you assume my gender?" (FLEXING & FINESSING). Cold Visions‘s thematic broadness lends itself to Bladee’s impressive ability to tell a compelling narrative about his past.
I can’t believe I’m on the third paragraph of this article and I’ve hardly discussed what the album actually sounds like! 🙀 In short–it’s great. Bladee joins forces with the majority of his previous collaborators on Cold Visions, but it’s as if they’ve all been pulled out from different points in time and sent to our present. The album has vocal features from Yung Lean, Thaiboy Digital, Ecco2k, and Black Kray/Sickboyrari, and the production is done by Whitearmor, Yung Sherman, Working on Dying’s F1LTHY, Ripsquad’s Lusi, and Skrillex, among several others. The majority of the instrumentals are heavily influenced by Rage, a subgenre of trap characterized by its wide supersaw lead synths, heavy 808s, and a generous amount of soft clipping. To me, Cold Visions sounds very similar to Bladee’s album Working on Dying (yes, with the producers of the same name), although a variety of blissful ambient elements are fused with it. The melodies are playful in some parts (“FLATLINE”) and ominous in others (“ONE SECOND”), further contributing to the fusion of his two styles. The dialectical nature of this album is not just expressed through Bladee’s lyrics–even the instrumentals hint at this tension between his sorrow and hope.
Overall, this album is incredibly effective, and it’s a really genuine and meaningful look into how Bladee’s musical success has shaped the course of his life for better and for worse. However, given that Cold Visions is 30 songs long, there are a couple songs that don’t add much and just kind of take up space on the track list. Personally though? I’ll take all the Bladee I can get 🙂
Favorite tracks:
- PARANOIA INTRO
- WODRAINER
- YUNG SHERMAN
- FLATLINE
- DON’T DO DRUGZ
- KING NOTHINGG
- END OF THE ROAD BOYZ
- OTHERSIDE
Misses:
- LOWS PARTLYY
- NORMAL
- PM2
