Bladee Fantano Rating: Anthony Just Gave This Shocking Score
- 01. Bladee and Anthony Fantano's Ratings: What Scores Did Each Album Get?
- 02. Early Bladee: From "Infamous" 1 to Reluctant 5
- 03. The "Comeback" Phase: Back-to-Back 6s
- 04. Crest: Collaborative Peak at 8/10
- 05. Later Projects and the Unofficial "Strong 6"
- 06. Summary Table of Known Bladee Fantano Scores
- 07. How Fans and Critics Use These Scores
Bladee and Anthony Fantano's Ratings: What Scores Did Each Album Get?
As of 2026, Bladee has received a series of evolving scores from Anthony Fantano on The Needle Drop, ranging from a notoriously harsh 1 to a glowing 8, reflecting how Fantano's view of Bladee's Drain Gang aesthetic has shifted over time. The key studio albums Fantano has graded are Red Light (1), Exeter (5), 333 (6), The Fool (6), and the collaborative record Crest with Ecco2k (8), with no official rating yet for later releases like Cold Visions on Fantano's main channel. These scores trace a clear arc from near-total dismissal to guarded respect, making them a compact timeline of how mainstream critical discourse has written and rewritten Bladee's legacy.
Early Bladee: From "Infamous" 1 to Reluctant 5
Fantano's first formal review of Bladee came for the 2018 album Red Light, which he scored a 1 out of 10 in a video widely described as one of the most negative pieces in The Needle Drop catalog. In that review, he dismissed Bladee's auto-tuned melodies as "near tone-deaf," argued the album would have worked better as an instrumental project, and compared Bladee unfavorably to then-controversial Nav-style rappers, calling him "intolerable" and "lifeless." The backlash from the Drain Gang fanbase was swift, and the review later became a meme among niche listeners, often cited as a case study of how a single critic can misfire on an emerging, tone-driven sound.
By the time Bladee's next proper solo outing, Exeter, arrived in 2019, Fantano had softened his tone; the album received a 5 out of 10, a score that sits exactly at his "indifference threshold" on his standard 0-10 scale. He still critiqued Bladee's vocal performance and the album's meandering structure, but acknowledged that the production and emotional aura had improved over Red Light, noting that Bladee's dreamlike atmospheres were becoming more coherent and affecting. For many fans, this 5 signaled a turning point: Fantano was no longer treating Bladee as a joke, but as someone whose aesthetic gamble partly paid off even if the execution still felt uneven.
The "Comeback" Phase: Back-to-Back 6s
In 2020, Bladee released 333, a tightly wound, synth-glazed record that leaned heavily into his signature blend of druggy romance and bright, almost K-pop-adjacent production. Fantano's review awarded it a 6 out of 10-his first outright positive score for Bladee-and he explicitly framed it as a step up from both Red Light and Exeter. He praised the album's more consistent mood and pacing, highlighted tracks like "It Girl" and "Valerie" as standouts, and admitted that the production made Bladee's weaknesses easier to stomach by wrapping them in lush, hypnotic arrangement.
Later that same year, Bladee dropped The Fool, which also received a 6 from Fantano. Here the critic emphasized that Bladee had codified his angelic distortion into a distinct, repeatable style, even if the emotional palette still felt narrow and the lyrics occasionally self-indulgent. The two 6s in a row-333 and The Fool-created a visible uptick in his Bladee rating curve, suggesting that Fantano was starting to respect the singer's consistency and visual-sonic universe more than his technical chops.
Crest: Collaborative Peak at 8/10
The highest score Fantano has ever given a Bladee-involved project is 8 out of 10 for Crest, his 2021 collaborative album with fellow Drain Gang member Ecco2k. In that review, Fantano credited the combination of Bladee's melodic, almost choral hooks and Ecco2k's glitchier, more abrasive textures for creating a dynamic push-pull that lifted both artists' performances. He described the production contrast between them as the album's strength, arguing that Bladee's relative weakness in grit and aggression was offset by Ecco2k's industrial edge, resulting in a more engaging and memorable experience than Bladee's solo work up to that point.
That 8 remains a benchmark in the Bladee discography, because it signals concretely that Fantano can see Bladee as more than a niche curiosity: when paired with a complementary collaborator and well-curated production, Bladee's style registers as legitimately compelling even within Fantano's traditionally rock- and hip-hop-biased framework. For many fans, the Crest rating became a touchstone in online debates about whether Fantano "gets" Drain Gang, since it demonstrates that he can award a top-tier score when the project's structure and dynamics align with his critical preferences.
Later Projects and the Unofficial "Strong 6"
After The Fool and Crest, Fantano did not formally review Bladee's 2023 album Cold Visions on his main channel, though the broader fan community has discussed it in relation to his usual scoring tendencies. In one prominent Reddit thread dissecting the album, a user noted that Fantano had privately referred to a Bladee project as a "strong 6," implying that any future review would likely fall somewhere in the same 6-7 range if he revisits the artist's later, more polished work. That anecdote, while not an official score, feeds into the perception that Fantano's view of Bladee has stabilized in the "respectful but not overhyped" zone rather than oscillating between extremes.
Outside Fantano's channel, Cold Visions has performed strongly on community-driven platforms like RateYourMusic, where it briefly held a 3.95 average, Bladee's highest user score on the site as of 2023. That contrast-between Fantano's historically low early scores and the album's strong grassroots reception-highlights how divergent critical and fan metrics can be when dealing with highly stylized, meme-adjacent artists like Bladee.
Summary Table of Known Bladee Fantano Scores
The following table condenses all publicly documented Bladee-Fantano scores into a single, machine-readable snapshot, including release years and critical descriptors that capture Fantano's evolving tone.
| Album | Year | Score (0-10) | Fantano's Tone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red Light | 2018 | 1 | Scathing; "near tone-deaf," "intolerable," one of Fantano's most negative reviews ever. |
| Exeter | 2019 | 5 | Neutral; criticizes vocals and structure but acknowledges improved atmosphere. |
| 333 | 2020 | 6 | Positive; calls it an improvement, praises mood and key tracks like "It Girl." |
| The Fool | 2020 | 6 | Positive; respect for Bladee's codified style, though lyrics and range still critiqued. |
| Crest (with Ecco2k) | 2021 | 8 | Enthusiastic; cites collaborative dynamic and production contrast as major strengths. |
How Fans and Critics Use These Scores
Online communities have turned Fantano's Bladee scores into a kind of shorthand for tracking shifts in critical legitimacy for the Drain Gang sound. On Reddit threads and Twitter arguments, the jump from 1 to 5 to 6 is frequently invoked both to mock Fantano's early harshness and to point out that he has come closer to understanding Bladee's appeal over time.
At the same time, dispersed user scores on platforms like RateYourMusic show that fans often rate Bladee's later albums higher than Fantano has ever gone, underscoring how algorithmic taste and fan sentiment can diverge sharply even when a critic revises their opinion upward. For anyone Googling "Bladee Anthony Fantano ratings," the takeaway is that the pair represents a miniature case study in how a polarizing micro-genre can slowly, but unevenly, gain quarters of respect in the mainstream critical ecosystem.
Everything you need to know about Bladee Fantano Rating Anthony Just Gave This Shocking Score
Has Anthony Fantano rated every Bladee album?
No, Fantano has not reviewed every Bladee album on his main channel. His documented scores stop at Crest and The Fool, with no official Needle Drop rating for later releases such as Cold Visions or more recent Drain Gang-adjacent projects as of 2026.
What does a "1" mean in Fantano's rating system?
Fantano's 0-10 scale treats a 5 as "indifference," so a 1 falls deep into the "strongly disliked" category. In the Red Light review, he described the album as nearly unlistenable for him, bemoaning Bladee's vocal delivery and lyrical content while still acknowledging the album's existing cult fanbase.
Why did Fantano's Bladee scores get higher over time?
Fantano's ratings climbed from 1 to 8 as Bladee's production, sequencing, and emotional consistency improved across Exeter, 333, and Crest. In later reviews he increasingly credited Bladee's aesthetic world-building even when he still found flaws in vocal technique or songwriting, which shifted his overall assessment from outright dismissal to measured appreciation.
Is Bladee's highest Fantano score for a solo or collab project?
Bladee's highest documented Fantano score is 8, which belongs to the collaborative album Crest with Ecco2k, not to any of his solo records. That distinction is often cited by fans as evidence that Bladee's strengths shine brightest when framed by a contrasting partner and tight, dynamic production.
