Final summer season, I joined Pitchfork as its new editor from the world of 2020s impartial music running a blog. It’s an unglamorous world, however one I’m deeply keen on, all janky web sites and Substack newsletters. It’s the place a variety of horrible, unedited writing is occurring, but in addition the place a few of the most important and pressing writing is occurring. Within the even smaller music-focused realm of this world, there aren’t any visitors calls for, no “home type,” simply interviews, takes, and lists pushed by ardour and curiosity.
One among my objectives at Pitchfork has been to convey a few of that bloggy power to the location, highlighting the voices of critics, specializing in rising subcultures, and restoring a few of the web site’s rawness. The way in which I see it, we’ve bought such a giant platform right here; why not use it to get bizarre, highlight genuinely unsung expertise, and get actually actual about our style?
Because of this, when the idea of “cowl tales” got here up a couple of days into my tenure, I used to be initially a little bit nervous. How would we match such shiny editorial packages right into a Pitchfork ecosystem that we’re making an attempt to make extra down-to-earth, extra human?
Phrased in another way, what does a Pitchfork cowl story seem like proper now? Some ideas sprang up: It’s a narrative about somebody we care loads about proper now (and assume you must, too). It’s a narrative that unfurls a whole scene or subculture like a tapestry. It’s a narrative concerning the future.
The identify “Bladee” saved popping up in my mind. Over the past decade, “web music” has been made within the Swedish rapper’s picture, however Bladee, now 30, stays near-impossible to pin down. As he’s gone “from meme to fable,” infiltrating Charli XCX’s (and perhaps your personal) Spotify Wrapped, and as Pitchfork itself has circled on him and his collective Drain Gang critically, the timing to do a canopy story on him simply felt proper.
