my connection to drain gang & how it all began.

picture this. . . it's 2014--you're a young girl who got access to the internet way too early, (literally aged 10, but we don't talk about that..) but its all okay because you knew not to be stupid online. (or so you thought.) its nearing early 2015. you're in bed on your really old laptop, beneath your arctic monkeys posters, poking your head around the internet, tumblr, some imageboards..twitter.. the works! got a solid image? great. okay, now picture this, you're on soundcloud listening to whatever emo soundcloud rappers were "popular" (had atleast 100 likes, since 100 likes seemed so big at the time.) you get bored so you log onto youtube.com. after a few commentary videos, some vaporwave, (and meme videos, of course.) a music video catches your eye. ginseng strip 2002 by yung lean. you give it a listen. you dislike it. a lot. infact you think, " this sounds like actual garbage." but you cannot stop listening for some reason. the visuals are addictive, scratching some sort of hidden itch within your brain that you had no clue you needed scratching until now. you look up the name of the artist online.. but don't care all that much, so you keep his name in mind and go to bed next to the fireplace in the livingroom.
this was my first introduction to sad boys.


fast forward a few weeks and suddenly i find Bladee. i'm absolutely enamoured by the mixing that sounds a bit like a dumpster fire & the slightly off beat singing. I would check his twitter & read his tweets. i silently lurked given how young & shy i was, but i continued to listen silently from the sidelines. As I got older, I stopped listening, but only temporarily. around ~2017 i got back into his music. I was an angsty young girl who was so so angry at the world and i felt truly seen by bladee's music, specifically the songs made under his evil bladee, the works that came before "reformed bladee". he was one of the only artists that truly made me feel understood (besides a few emo bands & other soundcloud rappers, of course..) over the next few years (2018-onward) i become akin to a superfan, learning every single detail about gtbsg & them as people, as opposed to just being invested in the music.. it makes me happy. somewhere along the line it became a special interest of mine, which shouldnt be too surprising. i found sollace in their work, and despite the fanbase annoying me sometimes, i can't bring myself to let go of their work. i was OBSESSED, which caused a bit of jealously from some guy who liked me when we were 15. 2020 rolls around and exeter is released. something snaps in my brain. the visuals of the LOVESTORY mv absolutely encaptured me, i began editing all of my youtube videos to have the same energy as that musicv video. meaning it was incredibly hard to see anything going on. i wasnt too engrossed in the fanbase since i'm really protective over my interests and don't like seeing others claim to like things that i enjoy more than i enjoy them! which sounds stupid, but its important to me, okay? i was so intrigued & even began to learn swedish just incase i somehow ran into bladee? depsite living in a completely different country? 15 year old me's logic was really weird.

so what is drain gang, anyways?

so glad you asked! so for some (brief) background, sad boys (sbe) is a music collective formed by jonatan leandoer hastad (yung lean) & carl-mikael goran berlander (yung gud) in stockholm sweden [2013]. sbe began to associate with gtbsg (gravity boys shield gang, also formed (from what i recall..) in 2013, which is composed of benjamin reichwald (bladee), zak arogundade (ecco2k), thanapat thaothawong (thaiboy digital) along with producers whitearmor & yung sherman. they all later merged into the collective we all know and love today, drain gang!

but arent they that meme group? do they actually make good music?

i'd argue that drain gang's music is revolutionary and unique to the point of where no one who attempts to emulate them can come anywhere close to them. people have started to call their genre "DRAIN". a genre that nobody BUT drain gang can be. one can strive to be LIKE drain gang, but nobody will ever be DRAIN. one thing that pisses me off about the newer crowd of fans from tiktok is that.. they dont realize that their work has actual meaning and that its serious. a lot of people listen just for the "meme" or for validation in social circles which is so incredibly lame. i beleive everyone should do things because of an actual enjoyment, not for internet points. why would you listen to something you don't actually enjoy.. just for social acceptance?

my favorite member & why i love him..

i love love love bladee, the CEO himself! he is my absolute favorite member, from his personality to his lyrical genius, what is there to not love about him? when you set aside the fact that he is very cute, he's also a lyrical genius. his frequent callbacks to past projects, ie. the sewer in egobaby -> decay, his religious references, & attempts to sound somewhat cool despite being way too adorable.. he's just so incredibly smart.. as he's said in interviews, he doesn't wish to be put on pedestals since he's just like everyone else in the grand scheme but i think he is truly special, & ive felt such a connection to him and his work from such a young age, he's really funny in a very niche way, (from his old, now deleted tweets.) and seems like a true sweetheart from the fan accounts of meeting him & the few interviews online. my biggest dream is to meet him & tell him how much he and his work means to me, no matter how old i get. i love him so very much! hes so strong & clearly so loving, i hope i get a chance to hug him someday.. i think i am absolutely his biggest fan, i will always support him!! forever and always! i wouldnt nessecarily call myself a "stan" but at the least i'm a superfan of him! i feel like we'd make a perfect couple in a perfect world where he knows i exist.. i love him so very much, not to the point of being creepy or stalkerish but i do think he's so amazing, i just want to have coffee with him one day or something..

the other members & why i love them just as much..

i cannot say much about ecco given how mysterious hes remained over the years, but i really admire how seemingly down to earth he is depite his evergrowing fame. he's such a sweetheart from his moms accounts & seems so so cute! i wish that some "fans" wouldnt disregard him due to him just wanting to be left alone-- because he does not owe anyone any sort of presence or even music. i love thaiboy because he's purely genius! hes so kind & seems like an amazing father and husband too.. i love sherm, he seems to be having a hard time, and i really wish i could help him through it. i hope he knows how much he means to everybody around him, how much his life and his existence matters in this cold, hard earth. whitearmor is truly so talented with everything he does. i always listen to his solo work while i bake or cook or simply lay in my bedroom. i admire yung lean and his strength despite every hardship hes been through. in a 2020 interview, yung lean's in my head, bladee describes the events in miami which involve a close friend, barron's, death & an episode that yung lean went through whilst in miami for the first time. it's all in swedish but here's a small excerpt.

"and right when they leave, i hear jonte [nickname for yung lean] open his door & he walks into the bathroom. and when i come near the bathroom door i feel this strong energy, i'm scared to open it. and when i open it he's got paint on his face and sh**, just looking at himself in the mirror & starts to freak out. he smashed a window, when you look him in the eyes, hes not the same person. i'm like, what the f*** should i do? he's completely gone.i call an ambulance & they ask if he's taken anything, since they're convince hes on [hard drugs], i say no, hes just smoked a bit. they ask if he's suicidal and he says yes, which means they have to take him in."
hearing this made me admire lean more than ever before, his strength is more than i could ever comprehend. i'm so happy that he's still here and living, that he's still creating, that he's still him. i was never a huge lean fan until i heard that interview. it was completely heartbreaking but something i think everyone should hear. you can watch the full documentary here many people say that the documentary is "too long" or "boring" which i find very insensitive given the subject matter, i think it's a very important watch that shouldnt be downplayed due to being long. i think everyone should hear his tale and find courage in his strength throughout it all.
all of you mean the world to me, you'll never know how much you all mean to me, both as artists and as people, i could go on about it all day!!! i'm so excited to come to my first drain gang show, i missed all of the ones i was supposed to go to due to unforseen circumstances, but someday i'll make it to one! i love all of drain gang so so much! despite how cringe it may be, i always find myself fangirling over the group, everything about them just deeply enamours me to the fullest degree. i don't think anyone is a bigger fan than me, given i've been around for so long & know the words to all their songs, they're all i talk about outside of my actual hobbies & i've dedicated so much time to them. if i could, i'd absolutely go to every single show once they go on tour again, even when i'm not at shows i'm still at home cheering them on!

my favorite DG project

trash island! oh how i love trash island! potentially my favorit project in all of music history, it smells and tastes like nostalgia, autumn of 2019, its release, was such a beautiful time. i remember it as clear as glass, listening to it for the first time on soundcloud unnanounced as i drove home from the grocery store. it was foggy outside & i was a bit sad that day, i was always so sad, but it made me feel so much better. from the mellow tunes from "victim" to the upbeat yet upset "you lose", this project is pure perfection! i listen to it atleast once every single day, i feel like trash island is the epitome of musical genius. acid rain is very underrated but so beautiful & never fails to cut deep within my soul, only to heal it once more. nothing could ever describe the beauty of ecco2k's high pitched vocals harmonizing with bladee, thaiboy & lean's deeper vocals.
my least favorite project has to be ICEDANCER, many people love it and have a deep affinity for it, but it's never really been my favorite. be nice 2 me feels way too "generic" for a bladee track & only waster + topman really hit me in any sort of way. i think a part of my distaste for it came from the memeification of be nice 2 me which lead to a lot of "fake fans" entering the fanbase as i discussed earlier. i'm grateful for it though, since it's one of the first projects bladee dropped after threatning to quit music. i'm grateful because if he never dropped ICEDANCER, he probably would not still be making music today, which, it'd make me sad if he retired so early. personally, i feel like his best works from 2018 were "cover up" and RED LIGHT. decay in specific is my favorite song and cover up sounds like he was trying to sound cool but it kinda fell on his face due to how actually adorable he tends to be. i can never take bladee as a "cool hard" guy after seeing the video of him with the cat on his lap & the duck periscope. its just so impossible!

the funny part of the fanbase.

from the fanfic that ludwig aired on twitter, which by the way, the creator awknowledged and proceeded to still update, to people calling ecco2k and bladee, verbatim, their "twinky smol bois"-- the fanbase gets very absurd to the point of hilarity. at some point between then and now, people began completely forgetting that ecco2k and bladee are nearly 30 & began to "smol bean"ify them. there are various fanfictions revolving drain gang--which they don't seem to mind? most of them clearly written by girls ages 13-15 in innocent bliss of just wanting to write about their favorite singers, which isnt too absurd until you notice the everlasting theme of making bladee into an angsty emo boy for some reason. drain gang is the last group you'd expect to have a "fandom" yet has all the hallmarks of one, fan accounts, tumblr accounts revolving them (which i admitedly also run one of..), and even really weird obsessive fans which exhibit borderline stalkerish behaviour, such as the russian fangirl which bladee blocked after she tagged him in every photo she posted on instagram, which is very funny but makes me feel very embarrassed. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

little bloggy / fangirly section of this all! will update whenever i have time..

favorite pictures of bladee may 14 2023