Lucas Foster starts his day with a sour apple Rockstar.
Tickets for bladee’s first live performance in the United States went on sale Tuesday and sold out in less than three minutes (twitter search “bladee tickets” for a good time). His fanbase is especially rabid here because his art has a bizarre, appropriative and intertextual relationship with the refuse and ephemera of America’s trash culture. Bladee looks at stuff like fast food toys, fruit gummy outfits, energy drink advertisements with a sort of perverse fascination, and takes obscene pleasure in reappropriating their signifiers. He’s the Baudrillard of international rap stars, an artist fascinated by the freak show across the Atlantic, but hesitant to experience it on a regular basis.
His latest offering with fellow Swede and Sad Boys veteran Ecco2k is an update to the sound he has played with for half a decade. It’s a light, ethereal song as pretty as a pop art wallpaper and heavy as ketamine on a feather. The synth pop beat sounds closer to a Martin Dupont b-side than anything resembling rap music, and is a pretty place for the Swedish deconstructionist to croon:
“Touch, Unite
Out of this world
Everlasting
Flowers bloom
Never ending
Story of my life
Ballad for the sins”
