Cold Visions

by Bladee

there's a universe full of rappers who sound like bladee who want very badly for you to think that they're soooo cool. you can easily read cold visions as bladee's attempt at making a carti-style "rage" album and it's enough to make you wonder why people ever give clowns like yeat the time of day when bladee's been doing his schtick but way better since like 2013. listening to 2093 i just kept hearing yeat refer to himself as the "psycho CEO" and thinking about how obvious it is that he's ripping off bladee's "drain gang CEO" persona but trying to make it cool instead of fun. bladee does not fucking care about being cool. nobody else out here is writing bars like

I bought a thousand Smurfs on eBay I was on shrooms needless to say

or

Man I'm steppin' on the court

Man you're watchin' YouTube Shorts

or

I'm very far from regular, you could call me irregular

or

Leave you stranded out and canceled

Have you asking for an Advil

Have you signed up for a bad deal

At McDonald's, get the Sad Meal

the album is definitely too long and it's missing a lot of the sonic inventiveness and playfulness of bladee's "reformed" era (exeter/333/the fool/spiderr/good luck/crest). however, it's a very strong evolution of the style from earlier records like red light, and you can clearly hear the growth of bladee as a songwriter as well as the growth of whitearmor, f1lthy, and the rest of bladee's rotating cast of regular producers. for people who got on board with drain gang because of crest it might seem like a regression, but as someone who likes icedancer and gluee and red light just as much as the fool and crest, this was a welcome return to a sound bladee hasn't touched in a minute.