Joseph Krug makes his First Things debut arguing that the Swedish rapper Bladdee is a Romantic poet and holy fool. After he was struck by lightning, Bladdee’s genre-bending music departed from juvenile ruminations on sex, drugs, and self-loathing and became transcendent with awareness of divine love. He has performed songs titled “ONLY GOD IS MADE PERFECT” and “St. George the Martyr” to sold out stadiums.
“To an uninitiated, conservative listener, Bladee’s music will seem to share more in common with the decadence of modern rap than with anything that could be enduring. Bladee reminds us that the best way to speak to a culture might just be to do so in its native language.”
For further reading: Another hugely popular musical artist to take a religious turn is Spanish singer Rosalía. Stephen Adubato wrote on “Rosalía’s Restless Heart” in November, showing that her latest album reveals “her sudden realization that she has ‘a desire that nothing in the world can satisfy’ other than God himself.”
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