Lately, Bladee’s music has sounded like someone with a black hole in his stomach trying to irradiate his torment. Desperately reaching for the light, he’s exorcising his demons by recording a 30-track epic, reading books about alchemy and the occult and, for some reason, releasing an AI video game with James Ferraro and Microsoft. With increasing fame, his mission to escape ego and become King Nothingg has only gotten harder.
“One in a Million,” the opener to his new EP Ste the Beautiful Martyr 1st Attempt, is a breezy yet anguished rehash of these perennial concerns. This time he summons the spirit of Saint George, the Christian martyr famously said to have slayed a dragon. Now Bladee stands posed with a sword, ready to slay his own. He seems to see something of himself in the saint’s quest, a mirror to the way he has tried and so far failed to eradicate the “evil things in my mind.” The music itself is buoyant, with a skydiving beat by cloud-rap heroes Lusi and Woesum. Where the EP’s more intoxicating “St George the Martyr” showers you in fairy gurgles and tingly shivers, this song is textbook Bladee: a downcast melody contrasted with an airy shimmer that suggests a more self-possessed future. Years ago, he was surfing over life; now he’s wondering if it’s time to commit to a “reality more crisp.”
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