so my dad was driving me to practice and we were listening to some rock shit he likes and he told me to "putt on something you like". so then i put on lesbian vampire killers and he started bumping his head a lil bit. then i showed him a few songs off pain and he said he liked it a lot
w dad
first off i think this applies to a lot of artists on the lineup i just think bleood is the best example.
we all know that lockdown in 2020 kinda changed the social media landscape. since people couldnt really hang out irl there was a bigger need for online spaces to discuss their interests, especially those who belonged to different subcultures. and with tiktok getting quite popular around that time, there were a lot of people who wanted to post about the shit they liked on there. this led to a lot of people who didnt have anything better to do than scroll getting exposed to a lot of different niches without having to seek them out themselves. this was especially true for alt people and anime fans, because people didnt really blindly dog on it as much when they saw that there was a real community for "weird" stuff. this would make people more interested in less mainstream stuff (with some of it becoming mainstream). a good example of this is that a lot of people switched up on anime, instead of everything except dragon ball and naruto getting you labeled a neckbeard. so summary is that a lot of different subcultures became bigger and less people just followed what was the norm.
so what does covid tiktok have to do with bleood? well it became more acceptable and common to be into things outside of the old music mainstream; stuff like hyperpop, digicore and rage (which are pretty popular ik but stay with me). this had a huge impact on the underground scene, with a lot of these kinds of artists growing big (which no doubt inspired bleood). and since that wave led to a lot of different kinds of music having more substantial fanbases, bleood could find likeminded individuals such as the good people of 1c34 when he still went by deffici1e.
this led to bleood getting to create much more experimental music in his own lane. a lot like many other artists who started coming up during that time.
and with bleood blowing up, gaining a bigger fanbase and recently getting over 200k monthly it led to him becoming a well known name within the ug rap scene. and now after less and less attention to the mainstream, and a lot of more openness to different niches, it was practically the perfect time for bleood to get on rolling loud. this was also true for a lot of artists, since corpos like rolling loud have realized that it pays off to platform less conventional music.
the backlash from mainstream fans was pretty big when seeing this year's lineup, but its still nothing like the growing disdain a lot of people have been having with mainstream music since most newer mainstream artists have people feeling like their blowup was kinda forced.
TLDR: 2020 tiktok getting people into different aesthetics and types of music led to less focus on just the mainstream, and corporations have realized that supporting artists like bleood can get revenue instead of just future, travis scott, lil baby and whoever makes a tiktok hit. also do whatever the fuck u wanna do cus nobody except middle schoolers care about whats the new trend.
(sorry if this was a boring read)