CHAPTER 2
On Bladee
An Inverted Beloved Subject
For Bladee, the Beloved Subject is untouchable, indescribable, and unrealizable: a kind of chimerical half-person, half-concept, in which full, bodily consummation is not only impossible but actually undesirable. To “achieve” the Beloved Subject would break the Beloved’s spell,¹ and with it, one’s enchanted vision of reality—thus, one is better off vibrating in a semi-real state of agonized, perpetual, quasi-pleasurable longing.
In other words, Bladee hardly ever raps about sex.²
It’s not quite right to suggest that Reichwald simply inverts the traditional accumulative misogyny of the distinctly American rapper³: he certainly doesn’t advocate a hunky-dory monogamy or a healthy relational culture of mutual respect.⁴ Instead, Bladee inverts and then extends, positioning himself beneath the Beloved Subject: unworthy, manipulable, obedient,⁵ hopelessly, idiotically enchanted. For Bladee, the rightful romantic position involves one’s hands clasped, but not with the Beloved—rather, up-turned in admirational prayer, asking for instructions, understanding, softness, and ultimately, begging the Beloved Subject to confirm that she is real.⁶
It’s not quite a domination fetish, but it’s also not very far off.⁷
Do not look down while scaling the mountain lest you drop like a stone. Rather: ascend, your soul electrified, your world aflame.
The key difference here is Reichwald’s profound unconcern with sexual gratification—that’s not what’s at stake. What’s at stake is a golden,⁸ unbearably vivid vision of the world the Beloved Subject’s ephemeral half-presence provides. Orgasm simply can’t compete with a world on fire. Crucially, questioning the reality of the Beloved is the primary erotic mechanism of the relationship: it elevates the lover to the spirit level, the plane the Beloved dwells in full-time, a world of sprites and angels and talking foxes that appear in forests offering sword-rewarding quests and leather sacks of untold gems. To question her reality is to activate and enhance one’s reality-questioning faculties, and thus to unlock a world of deepening levels, a world limned with Chance, Luck, Light. A world of concept, a world beyond sense: a dream within a dream within a dream.⁹ Authenticating the reality of the Beloved, through a touch, or a kiss, or heaven forbid, the sexual act itself, would bring the Lover back to earth. A foolish error! Do not look down while scaling the mountain lest you drop like a stone.¹⁰ Rather: ascend, your soul electrified, your world aflame.
Flattered, perhaps, at being seen as beyond-human, but ultimately in need, as we all are, of being seen as really real.
We should examine this phenomenon’s uncanny resemblance to the “Madonna-Whore Complex,” first identified by Freud as “psychic impotence.” Freud writes: “Where such men love they have no desire and where they desire they cannot love.” The Beloved is either perfect, a Madonna, and therefore sexually off limits, or imperfect, and therefore a “whore,” a discardable tool whose value derives from her capacity for sexual gratification. Reichwald strays perilously close to playing out this complex: he certainly never hesitates to elevate his Beloved Subjects to the status of the Madonna. This unquestioned worship fails to account for the lived, multi-dimensional humanity of the Beloved: the warm-blooded fact that this is not a manic-pixie-dream-angel but a true to life human being who burps and cries and aches just like the Lover. Flattered, perhaps, at being seen as beyond-human, but ultimately in need, as we all are, of being seen as really real.
Perhaps Reichwald’s only saving grace is that he simply doesn’t meaningfully, or at least consistently, engage in the other part of the complex—“whore” is mercifully free from his vocabulary, except to describe his own behavior in a mall.¹¹ The seed of a latent misogyny fails to fully take root in Reichwald’s art because everyone’s a Madonna and no one’s a whore. Reichwald rarely degrades. In fact, he asks that the Beloved refrain from degrading him: please just talk to me nice.¹² The closest Bladee gets to a derogatory bravado appears on “D-925”: “I think I caught her like a spider / I might keep her for a week and then I drop her.”¹³ These occasional outbursts of hip-hop’s dreaded archetypes—misogyny, materialism, and bravado—are mostly prevalent in Reichwald’s earlier work, often sequentially couched with their negation,¹⁴ and so buried betwixt meme and koan it’s hard to take them seriously.¹⁵ Thus, most of them read to me as the overflowing growing pains of an artist still carving out the difficult task of wedding craft and self.
Reichwald’s slightly matured emotional attitude to the Beloved Subject brings us to “She’s Always Dancing”:
You know I wanna tell you something But I don't know how to say that one thing But you know, words don't have to be everythingWords can't describe her eyes She is so beautiful, I die Words can't describe her eyesWe shed a feather in mid-flight in hopes we'll remember tonight Who am I? I am no less than nothing I might be forever fried but at least I tried it It goes around in a vicious cycle, we like itThe way she's dancing Am I hallucinating? It seems that she's fading away The way she's dancing Feels like I'm hallucinating And it seems like she's fading away
The angelic, transcendent, unreal beauty of the Beloved disintegrates the Lover’s ability to fully apprehend her humanity. Thus, she becomes daemonic, tethered to earth by only one foot, endowed with special romantic-spiritual powers that enable demigodic feats: perpetual dancing, smoke-like apparitions, hallucinatory hexes. A real person must, at some point, stop dancing, take a break, refresh their humanity—but her, “She,” she’s not a real person. She’s always dancing, flickering around in the Lover’s psychosphere. It’s appropriate, then, that the visuals to “She’s Always Dancing” feature the cartoonish eyes opening and closing effect: the ephemerality of the Beloved makes porous the boundary between dream and reality. If she’s dream-like, then all of life could be a dream. In this way, it doesn’t matter if you’re beside her in real life or simply replaying her image in your mind like a Beloved re-memory. She doesn’t live outside of you. She lives inside.
For Reichwald, the Lover’s deepest wish, beyond even being remade in the Beloved’s image, is to be absorbed by the Beloved totally, the way a white blood cell eats a Protozoa.
But the Beloved does not only disintegrate the Lover’s ability to fully apprehend the Beloved’s humanity, the Beloved disintegrates the humanity of the Lover himself.¹⁶ Reichwald makes clear that it is the Lover’s fondest hope that disintegration make way for reconstruction, directed exclusively by the Beloved: perhaps, if the Lover allows himself to be designed in precisely the way the Beloved requires,¹⁷ unity¹⁸ in perpetuity¹⁹ can be realized. Reichwald explores the resultant cruel irony, especially on the bleak Eversince, when one offers the Beloved subject infinite access to one’s self, that is, when one bequeaths the ultimate intimacy—the authentication to be remade in the Beloved’s innermost image—and the Beloved remains indifferent.²⁰ Saddest of all, one is offering precisely what one wishes they were being offered.
For Reichwald, the Lover’s deepest wish, beyond even being remade in the Beloved’s image, is to be absorbed by the Beloved totally, the way a white blood cell eats a Protozoa.²¹ The ultimate Beloved-Lover act is to literally be two made one,²² but not by being combined, or awkwardly pasted together, or united via sexual organs, but rather by being destroyed, crushed, consumed. To be the Beloved’s food. Achieving the Beloved means destroying oneself to become her. Phagocytized, devoured, drained: leaping into the glitteringly beautiful maw of her primordial volcano. You are so beautiful I die.²³
She is under your microscope, but you are under her thumb.
The visuals of “She’s Always Dancing” also neatly encapsulate the plurality of the Beloved Subject: we see dozens of women, fading in and out over each other in one perpetual screen dissolve. Never are we allowed to bear witness to the full portrait of the Beloved: we see mouths, hands, bellies, eyes, but never altogether, never all at once. The Beloved subject is irreducible to a single, earthly body: she is a blend, a pastiche, a mosaic of the beauty of all women, of all the world. Notably, most of these Mural-Women carry phones, flashlight on, recording the viewer, that is, us. We can only bear witness if She bears witness to our act of bearing witness: the masculine fantasy of an infinite panopticon, in which he can endlessly study the Mural-Women in his mind, turns back on itself. The object of the male gaze gazes back. We must contend with the fearsome Cyclopsian lighthouse of her iPhone flashlight that turns our eyes into our insides. Like that cute, crop-topped, red-solo-cup toting beauty who catches your eye catching her eye, the implicit price of the infinite female-navel gaze is that they know you are gazing—and they know how much it means to you. She is under your microscope, but you are under her thumb.²⁴
The song “That Thing You Do”²⁵ also captures the Beloved Subject’s irreducible plurality through the vague exaltation of its chorus, which comically lacks any specificity at all whatsoever. Why am I endlessly drawn to you? It’s simply “that thing you do.” It’s of no importance what this thing is, only that it’s performed by the Beloved Subject, and performed “constantly.” “That thing you do” is so vague, in fact, it could be re-interpreted as simply “the fact you can do things,” that is, your ability to be. Praising the Beloved for that “thing” she does is praising her for existing, in any mode. And isn’t this precisely the case when one is in the teeth of utter admiration? The Beloved could debase themselves totally, could snot-rocket a yolky curd onto their trendy blouse, and it would be lumped within the angelic. It’s simply “that thing you do.”
When you whisper in her faery ear that you love her, that’s when she fades away and you are left parched, wandering in the desolate desert of your own making, as a cold wind blows from the north to the south.
Bladee’s tropey “words can’t describe her eyes” harkens back to classical love poetry of old, like so many Shakespearean sonnets²⁶ in which the Beloved’s beauty so overwhelms the cage of words that try to contain it the artist can only admit they are inadequate to the task of description. This admission, paradoxically, authenticates the Beloved’s beauty further. But for Reichwald, words fail not because of the poet’s admirable but ultimately inadequate ability to capture the human subject, but rather because the Beloved is a chimera that needs chimerical language, not human words, to be captured and described.
And what’s chimerical language? Numbers, colors, smoke, clouds, light, mycelium—the chemically and scientifically real, perhaps, but the miraculous we fail to fully understand and appreciate. Reichwald’s Beloved Subject requires spoken worlds,²⁷not words. Words are not only not up to the task, they don’t feature.²⁸ Words don’t have to be everything—words can’t be everything. Take a word and change the meaning—only you. What is one to do in this situation? Offer the paltry and crushingly peasantine phrase “I love you”? Impossible! Smell, but do not inhale, the Beloved’s magical smoke: allow her to touch every part of your being without ever really being felt. To keep her close, keep her far away. When you whisper in her faery ear that you love her, that’s when she fades away and you are left parched, wandering in the desolate desert of your own making, as a cold wind blows from the north to the south.
Footnotes
1. Under your spell, out of my grip, that's the only way I live
Under your shoe, under my skin, only place I can exist
Under your spell, out of my grip, that's the only way I live
Under your shoe, under my skin, only place I can exist
2. There’s a little twinge in me when I describe Bladee as “rapping.” It doesn’t feel right. And yet, on “Obedient,” on “ICARUS 3REESTYLE,” he’s certainly rapping; on something like “Don’t Worry,” or “She’s Always Dancing,” it’s something closer to singing. This likely stems from Reichwald’s artistic anxiety—only half-heartedly disguised—about being cornered ("to re-create myself, I have to kill something") and boxed in, ceding total creative freedom to an evolution-styming niche. Reichwald’s valorization of the Jack-of-all-trades artist explains his early production efforts (e.g. here, here, and here), as well as his dogged work rate, multi-media prolificity, and omnidirectional tones of sequential projects (who saw Good Luck’s sound coming, for instance?). Unquestioned within Reichwald and many of his co-acts is a Daedalian desire for perpetual innovation and then re-innovation ("any one of us would be burnt out at this rate). This is why his fan base rolls their eyes at Spotify’s “hyper pop” label, for instance—it fails to account for the deliberate re-making of self and sound so important to Reichwald’s art.
3. Which, it should be said, is no great feat of genius (inverting misogyny).
4. For many of these American Rappers, there is no such thing as “the Beloved,” but rather only a rotating pleasure carnival and the leonine pride at pursuing, obtaining, and then discarding novel partners (occasionally, when the rapper is “enlightened,” we also hear raps about the ensuing emptiness endemic to a life of uninhibited pleasure). Consider Young Thug and Rich Homie Quan’s “Bitches”:
But I like (Bitches) bitches (Bitches) bitches (bitches) whoa (Bitches) bitches (bitches) bitches (bitches) whoa (Bitches, bitches) What you like? (Bitches) I like (Bitches) I fuck (Bitches) I can't trust these (Bitches)
This isn’t to dunk on Young Thug or Rich Homie Quan, but rather to suggest that Bladee’s approach to the Beloved is enchantingly antipodal to many of the rappers he admires. In one clip, Bladee and Thaiboy dance to Chief Keef’s “Now it’s Over,” which includes the line “She gone give me top then I'mma slump her over,” and the chorus:
Keep me some hoes, a lot of hoes here Last year I cuffed that bitch, well now it’s over Now it's over, now it’s over Last year I didn't have shit, well now it's over Now it's over, now it's over Last year I cuffed that bitch, well now it's over
Rather than imitate his trophy-hunting heroes of yore, Reichwald smartly intuited that this Biggest Chad competition was played out, simple, and dull. (Which, it must be said, is one in a string of many inevitable decisions Reichwald had to make being a blue-eyes of Stockholm extraction ("you don't know my story death or glory in the inner city"). Hold that thought.)
5. Bad dog but for you I'm obedient
6. Give me something, please, give me what I need
Show me something real
I'm bleeding heavily, you're my injury
Execution, get on my knees
Give me something, please, give me what I need
Show me something real
7. Public display me, shame me, baby
I do it all for you, rate me
Lie and betray me, hate me, you play me
I'll be whatever you make me
I can be your pet, play dead
Can step on my neck, walk over my head
If you would want me dead I would be into it
+
One second of your time for all of mine
8. You make me feel like the golden one
9. Put a concept on that feeling
+
Dreaming dreaming dreaming dreaming dreaming dreaming dreaming in a dream
10. I was almost at the top but I looked down and fell
11. I'm a mall whore, and my Pradas look like Tom Fords
12. I don't wanna talk if you're not gonna talk to me nice
13. An early deployment of the spider motif, crucial to Bladee’s art, as I’ll argue later. Also on “Best Buy”: “I can’t fuck with you girl, bye, you’re not my type.”
14. I hate her I'm just playing yeah I love her
15. Best believe it never was a joke but I was always kidding
16. Who am I? I am no less than nothing
She is so beautiful I die
17. Go to the store for you, you can go and show me what you want
I'll be funny, I'll be fine, I'll be flirty, I'll be shy
18. Mix my blood with your blood
19. If I want you, I want no ending
20. Do you believe in love?
+
You don't want me do you?
+
She gave me a lovenote
But I woke up with a cut throat
22. Can make two into one
(How could I not)
Never be alone
Can make two into one
(How could I know)
Never be alone
Can make two into one
Never be alone
23. I want to be like you
Feel like you, real like you
Walk like you, talk like you
In your skin, me and you (Be like you)
I want to be like you (Feel like you)
Feel like you, real like you (Be like you)
Walk like you, talk like you (Be like you)
In your skin, me and you
24. Reichwald, in Dostoevskyian self-lacerating fashion, delights in basking in the glare of the “Mean Girls.” There’s a delicious pleasure in being made a fool over the Beloved subject, and just because she is a Madonna does not mean there does not lurk beneath the possibility of betrayal. Recall: Love is beautiful because it goes away and comes again and goes away and comes again.
25. Girl, that thing you do, that thing you do
That thing you do to me, that thing you do
You do it constantly, that thing you do
That thing you do to me, that thing you do
That thing you do, that thing you do
That thing you do to me, that thing you do
You do it constantly, that thing you do
That thing you do to me, that thing you do
26. e.g. Sonnet 53: “What is your substance, whereof are you made, /
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?”
27. You’re my river, liquid and silver
+
Blood moon, black walls, I can't see at all
I'm in my special place
Black lake, blue pond, I hear the sirens call;
+
Destiny’s pretty now just for you
28. You know I wanna tell you something /
But I don't know how to say that one thing /
But you know, words don't have to be everything