Papa Squat you made me so emotional while you've been explaining missing person lyrics i cried, i had to hear something like this from someone. Really apperciate that, thank you sm.
to me, the contrast between the self-annihilation, desperation and pleading in some tracks compared with the apparent dismissiveness in tracks like Romeo could be seen as what he means when he says ”if they love me i might hurt them”, his depressive mood sometimes puts him in a place of complete indifference towards life and the people around him. ”when i'm in you area the flowers start withering”, sometimes when you’re depressed you really become an energy vampire and it affects the people around you and this could be said for a lot of his early music where he fluctuates between these destructive feelings of self-hatred and yearning, and then apathy and dismissiveness (of life, of love, of people). i think it's a common experience for people who deal with these extended depressive moods, sometimes you loose all feelings, even empathy, and it turns you cold and mean (especially as teenager/young adult when you haven’t developed proper coping skills)
This album is absolutely perfect for a sunny 30 degree F windy day in the winter. So bright yet harsh. That mixed with the beauty and hard hitting music and the depressed and drained out vocals unfortunately makes it my go to seasonal depression album for the winter.
for me its perfect for those snowy nordic mornings when its kinda dark but not pitch black, smoking a cigarette outside in the cold waiting for class to start
23:17 when he says "you disrespect SG" SG stands for "shield gang" which is another name for drain gang or gravity boys (GTB), also sometimes referred to as "GTBSG" to mean "gravity boys shield gang" 👍
im pretty sure about this, so just to let you know, in some videos where they introduce themselves i understood that gravity boys aka gtb are the rappers, so bladee thaiboy digital and ecco2k and shield gang aka sg are the producers whitearmor and yung sherman, finally the whole group is reffered to as gtbsg or dg, ur not entirely wrong but i just thought this fact is somewhat important to let the other drainers know
@@xb4z1ng4 Do u know if SG refers to all producers of DG tracks, or just a few (whitearmor, yung sherman, ripsquadd, etc...)? I know f1lthy produced a backing track for bladee awhile ago, and nikitta produced birdbath and another track of bladee's.
@@privateassman8839 Im not sure abt this but I think that all rappers collab with various producers even SadBoys are closely related to DG and still Gud is I believe not considered SG so I think SG is just Whitearmor and Yung Sherman, but Im not sure man I didnt do some super deep research abt this maybe even Mechatok Woesum and Varg are SG.
Spot on with the Depeche Mode thing. Eversince more than any of his other stuff feels very 80s somehow. I wonder how intentional it was. I would love to hear a cover of Eversince in the style of The Human League
Cool to hear an older audience compare bladee's style to 80s post punk 17:30 you have to listen to all of his songs to hear the really good ones that get forgotten / overlooked. there are so many like that
I remember when this album came out. It really sold me out on bladee, this whole album sounded different not only from the other music in the space but even from the older gluee album and singles. If you want a "double" point of view of what was going on in these guys lives at the time I definitely recommend that you listen to warlord by yung lean. I always refer to these albums as twin projects. Recorded in the same frame of time, mostly written together, touch mostly on the same issues. The main difference is in the tone. While Eversince is melancholic and almost angelic in sound, warlord is gritty and can almost feel evil in some of the tracks. If you really get interested there's also a really nice documentary to see on vice's channel that I always recommend to people
I’ve listen to these albums hundreds of times but never out that connection together. Thanks for the idea ❤ They are both my favorite from each artist and this just makes them every more cool
I feel like album 333 is a spiritual successor to Eversince: Bladee accepted life with all its ups and downs and is now ready to face the bright side, knowing that there’s a fall after that. But now he finds joy in that. “Loss and gain is the same” from Trash Island is truly a defining phrase for Drain Gang.
@@chai8130 i think his evolution goes: gluee: super low point Eversince: Bladee is angry at the world/very empty, and expresses his emotions via this album WOD: bladee begins to accept his woes and deals with them with drugs/spending Red Light: bladee's hurtin ice dancer: thuggin it out with the help of excessive spending trash island: acceptance of the good and the bad exeter/333: balancing himself spiritually, finding beauty in everything the fool:spiritual transcendence. crest: bro found the light at the end of the tunnel (I know I didnt mention rip bladee, d&g, spiderr or any singles etc but u get the idea.)
@@kinniato i think for icedancer it was just a random release, ur right abt it just being abt random spending and finding a way to waste time or cope idk, it was his last hope cos he was probably gonna quit music because of redlight and the fact that all the reviews were horrible, then he randomly released it and got the fame and love he needed to keep going and after that he kinda found hope and it showed in his music, and eventually his projects got more spirtual and somewhat positive, as well as they had different perspectives on his life, loss and gain etc. icedancer isnt his best but it needed to happen icl
I love how while watching you listen intently, we can see you actively draining ☄️☄️☄️ letting the music consume you and succumbing to how it makes you feel
The vampire/blood imagery in Sugar I feel is a metaphor for how it feels to just wanna consume another person in a (perhaps unhealthy) way, it’s like a symbol of very strong desire. But it's also a bit playful the way he literally portrays himself as a vampire throughout this album I think, there's this underlying deadpan humor to some of the bars (at least "Feel like Casper, feel like you can see me when I'm friendly / You can see me wearing Fendi, as soon as I make my entry" always makes me crack up lol, or the way he says "Catching all these feelings, catch my hands / I don't catch emotions, I'ma cash out in the bank")
I'm glad to hear it. I don't know what I said, but if it connected with you, that's a good thing. You'll have good days and bad, and sometimes you have to slog through the crappy days to get to good ones. Keep moving!
I think you hit the nail on the head with what drain is about. It's about acknowledging that in the grand scheme of things life kinda sucks, but that doesn't mean you can't make your own meaning from it and forge your own path
not sure if it's as clear cut as being that 'life kinda sucks', I think it's more so that appreciating its downs is just as important as its ups. Tho what you said is pretty much to the same sentiment
Need gluee someday! It’s his mixtape from 2014 and is very highly praised in the music community from what I’ve seen. Amazing intro that will have you hooked from the start highly recommend giving it a listen
I think Skin is such a tender song, especially when you contrast ”no touching, I find it disgusting” with the way he sings ”skin skin skin, let the skin touch the skin”. It seems physical contact is this extremely intense thing and it just makes it all the more special Also love the difference between how he darkens his voice in the first verse and how light and sweet it sounds in the second one. Makes me think of the relief you feel after you've made the decision to finally let go, or perhaps he's already left his body and so now it sounds more heavenly
that's why this will always be my all time favorite album. the emotional journey you go trough every track and the way the intro and the outro contrast just fits perfectly at least for me
glad u listened to the whole album after listening to skin. i feel like when you listen to Skin with the album as a whole its even better and makes a bit more sense in a way.
SG is shield gang, GTBSG is gravity boys shield gang, and DG is drain gang. these are all of the names that they have gone by throughout the years but we know them as DG now but there's still references to SG and GTB
I can't even describe how this album makes me feel and what it means to me, i heard it for the first time not long ago, maybe a year and a half ago but it was during a very transitional point in my life and i was going thru a lot of shit and the beats on songs like who goes there, missing person and lovenote, and the atmosphere and lyrics on every song are great, i don't love every single song on the album but i like it more than any other bladee album and i wish i could describe the way listening to it makes me feel. It's that feeling music gives you that you just can't put into words. I'm so happy you liked it, luv ya papa squat
To me, it’s the thought that someone so mentally ill and broken will sap the life from the flowers - a metaphor for draining the energy and love from those around who aren’t suffering, bringing them down, feeling like a burden.
it could also be dreading to hurt someone, maybe its not abt them being the reason, maybe its about him being the reason, and when hes in their area, he has a fear that hes gonna negatively impact or damage them, and their area idk
I think it’s really cool you have a background with electronic music already, you’re able to see how he takes elements of electronic to create something new
Love this, listening to bladee is definitely something i love to do but hearing you break it down and really go in depth about it like the missing person track it’s almsot like therapy for me! Love this
i always found the title of blood veil/stillborn very interesting. both bladee and ecco talk a lot about so much of life being up to chance to the point where it feels trivial. hows it fair that some are born with a blood veil that some cultures believe is the mark of a seer and magic powers and others are born stillborn?
you had a few questions about the lyrics for so what so i figured i would give my thoughts :) the "you did this a year but for me for life" how i see it is calling out the posers like ecco does later, and "i dont give a fuck, on my way back down" is relating to how deeply depressed people may sometimes not even necessarily want to get better as it's such a hassle in relation to just trying to find a new low [speaking from experience], would make sense seeing as its been rumoured that something bad happened to bladee in 2015-16 that caused a massive change in style and social media behavior im very happy to see someone listen to this music with open ears and appreciate it like this, thoroughly enjoy the content !
Hi Papa Squat, this video actually introduced me to those Depeche Mode/Echo & The Bunnymen songs, and I really like them! Would be cool if you made a playlist of the songs that you thought were really cool as a teenager/young adult. (I'm a young adult mostly grew up listening to hip-hop)
Ah, yeah, they both have some GREAT songs from the early days (which is when I found them both). I have an "Influences" playlist on the channel! I should add some more to it, actually -- including some Depeche Mode.
you don't even have to react to this on video but you should watch live performances of Dont ask into lovenote its a combination of an ecco2k song and lovenote and the beat drop goes crazy - I recommend the Berlin one but they're all heavenly
Beautiful review for an album that helped me through some very tough times. Hope we can have a Red Light review soon. Do you have an Instagram Pap Squat?
u listen the older 80s alt stuff that my dad does and i agree that especially who goes there is the same vibe ur kinda like my dad had a youtube channel where he listened to my music
Love how you see art in each individual song, a lot of people just refuse to listen to anything out of the main stream, bladee puts effort and a strong message in each song, my favourite albums are 333 and eversine as it's very symbolic, you could say redlight also has it's own dark meaning.
in an interview they did recently they all said as theyve gotten older theyve found it more difficult to make friends w people who arent each other because they know each other so well
i absolutely love your videos, im just wondering what you do for work? do you have a history with music as a career or as a hobby? love you and your videos so much!
I've been a music fan and listening since about 10 years old (53 now, ugh). My degree is in English and Creative Writing, so I did a lot of analysis of literature over my life and have worked as a writer and editor (and game designer) for years. I also worked on my high school radio station, which was a progressive/alternative/"college radio" format, so I was exposed to all sorts of strange stuff, from punk to jazz. I didn't like all the music I heard, but I've definitely found tracks from every genre that I LOVE. I started this channel because hip hop has gotten so huge over the years, but I didn't get much exposure to it (except for the breakthrough hits) until about 20 years ago. When I started this, I was going to go chronologically from the 70s onward, but people started sending me reccomendations, so I mostly do those now. I'm glad you enjoy the videos!