"Although I didn't write this song, it spoke to me in a way that made me feel as if it was my own story,” Brandon said. “I found myself playing it over and over again in my bedroom, remembering situations that I've been through.”
Check out the video for yourself below.
When speaking about how Bilt Rewards works, Founder and CEO Ankur Jain states, “Bilt Rewards has been four years in the making, but today we officially launched the Bilt Mastercard to the entire country. For the first time ever, everyone in the country can now earn points on rent. Just think…pay your rent, travel the world for free. Pay your rent, buy a home one day. We’re excited to be live and celebrating in the most beautiful space in all of New York.
Bilt is the first program that lets you earn points on rent. Rent is your biggest expense every month, and just like when you book a blight or book a hotel and earn miles or points, you can now do that just by paying rent on time. Imagine how much you can do when your biggest expense turns into your biggest reward.”
In the words of Mayor Eric Adams, “There are two kinds of people in the world: people from New York and people who wish they were.” And trust me, people who got a first-hand glimpse of the night through Instagram stories wish they could be a New Yorker for the night.
Take a look at how the night unfolded below.
For the music video, the duo wanted to play off of the idea of platonic soulmates. Inspired by the Cassie and Maddy duo from Euphoria, they explored what it is like to feel so bonded to another person without any romantic aspect affecting the relationship. Honoring the beauty of this musical collaboration and highlighting their kismet pairing and their shared love for maximalism and taking fashion to the extreme, the pray2u music video is a roadmap to their friendship.
On a snowy Monday night in March, the underbelly of Boston’s subcultures came together to see their favorite Swedes. Donning camo prints, full suits, and lots of faux furs, every attendee was an RPG protagonist.
Drain Gang’s following, known as “drainers” are best characterized as the seventh-grade Minecraft kid who got cute and vapes now and are recognizable by their unique fashion sense, irony-steeped sense of humor, and disaffected demeanor. A rough amalgam of horse-girls-turned-hot-girls, gamers, and skaters, “drainers” make up the devoted fans of the internet’s boy band (with Bladee as a self-proclaimed Directioner).
Unlike boybands of the past, Drain Gang builds a world around their music–from coveted merch design to discord channels–while maintaining an air of anonymity to create one of the last standing subcultures of the commodified online landscape. The concert itself embodied this sentiment. On a dimly lit stage, Drain Gang members were near indistinguishable from one another, catching glimpses of their gelled hair and eyes lined with black liner for brief moments in the spot(or strobe) light. Rather than putting on a highly curated, spectacle of performance, their energies were directed towards engaging the crowd.
The crowd, who willingly surrendered all sense of bodily autonomy and preservation, was a cacophony of head-against-elbow, hair-in-mouth, yelling-in-ear-from-all-directions. On the periphery of the pit stood the occasional open-mouthed tweaker blissfully absorbing the cloud of sweat, tears and spit wafting off the bodies in the mosh.
Through fan-favorites like “Be Nice 2 Me” and obscure cross-overs like Justin Beiber and The KID LAROI's STAY x Vanilla Sky the energy never waned, but was intensified by each layer of experienced shared across attendees and each unidentifiable bodily fluids showered down from the stage.
Within an established set of aesthetics, language and markers of belonging, it’s this connective tissue between Drain Gang and their loyal drainers that makes their following so unique. For a group characterized as “chronically online” the night was decidedly analog. With hardly a phone in sight (and if you could hold on to it through the toss and turn of the pit, you earned it), the unforgettable performance will be remembered, rather in the aches and pains sure to take hold and the phantom limb felt behind in the lost wigs, shoes, and personal belongings strewn across the post-show floor.
Much like drainers themselves, each forgotten item carried the unique memory of its own identity while taking on a disjunct, Frankenstein-like persona, larger than the individual, yet not quite human enough to be whole.
For a glimpse into the group-think, we asked drainers a few questions.
Attendee Polls:
Who is your favorite Drain Gang Member?
Bladee: 4
Ecco2k: 5
Thaiboy Digital: 2
Whitearmor: 1
Refused to pick a side, "#1Team": 1
Other(incl. gay guy & Ivanka Trump): 2
Misheard the question as "what is your favorite number": 2
Their favorite numbers were 14 and 8.
Is Bladee pronounced "blade" or "blade-E"?
Blade: 5
Blade-E: 3
Blade, but Blade-E is funnier: 3
