One of the biggest questions for anyone interested in a YouTube career, is how far YouTube can take them. It’s a platform with so much potential for creators, yet it always seems like anyone with major success wants to go beyond just YouTube and do something that is considered to be greater. Most of the time that’s due to a need to adapt, or continue growing a brand, with creators like Mr. Beast making chocolate bars and Amazon prime television series. However sometimes, you get someone who goes beyond YouTube due to raw creative passion.
Benjamin Lasky, or Quadeca, started YouTube in 2014 and grew his channel via Rice Gum disses and rapping over the Mii Channel Theme. Personally I always knew Quadeca more for his rendition of the Bulgarian national anthem and his Quadiki torches, so I only started listening to his music around 2021 with the release of From Me to You, specifically the single “Sisyphus”. Up until that point, Quadeca’s music was mostly the kind of mediocre internet rap that thousands of teens make every year just for fun after high school baseball practice. However, with mind-bending string arrangements melded with gorgeous synthesizers and vocal work, “Sisyphus” was notably different.. Now the album From Me to You does occasionally come to the same pitfalls that many internet rappers fell to in the late 2010s to early 2020s, lyrical miracle bars and all, but the highs are indeed mountainous.
Yet From Me to You did show incredible promise. Containing a fully fledged concept and story, alongside a visualizer/movie that would become standard for any future traditional albums Quadeca released, from Me to You was a small glimpse into the creative and technical potential of Quadeca’s musical future.
Following From Me to You, Quadeca released I Didn’t Mean to Haunt You and Scrapyard in 2022 and 2024 respectively. I Didn’t Mean to Haunt You wasa step even further in his grand artistic creative direction, detailing the story of a ghost coming to terms with people moving on with their lives after committing suicide, and Scrapyard being a collection of tracks displaying the absolutely godly production level that Quadeca was starting to reach just casually in his spare time.
In 2024, Quadeca also uploaded a YouTube video sharing a couple unreleased tracks that seem to be a cross between the production chops of his newer work and the general energy of some of his pre-2020s work. However, at the very end of the video is this soft sweet guitar, something so pleasant and surprising and so completely different from the prior fourteen minutes. Said guitar ended up being a snippet of a song that would eventually become “RUIN MY LIFE”, the third track for his upcoming album: Vanisher, Horizon Scraper, and a statement for where Quadeca’s vision would go.
When the album was released earlier this year on July 25th. I woke up from a bizarre night and turned on the movie he released to accompany the album, where I was immediately confronted by the beauty of the ocean and the sonic heaven that is “NO QUESTIONS ASKED”. The unearthly melody of the song and the absolute beauty of the layers and layers of euphoric glory washes over you like the waves that became so familiar to me as the album continued. The soft embrace of Quadeca’s voice, eventually harmonizing with artist Olēka comforts the listener even more with the assurance that “I’ll be there when no one is.” Something that I quite frankly needed in the moment, and continues to bring me a unique joy upon every listen to the track.
The following song “WAGING WAR” sets the tone for what the rest of the album will sound like. With perfect glittery synths making way for some of the most creative and diverse instrumentation I’ve heard on an album in years, the kind of stuff I could in the moment only describe as a cross between The Postal Service’s Give Up and Sufjan Steven’s Illinois. Quadeca himself sits outside a lighthouse, the same lighthouse from the YouTube thumbnail, before eventually deciding to start rapping on the beach, a premonition for the oceanic journey the album will take you on. “WAGING WAR” itself is very much the “call to adventure” of the album, with Quadeca mulling over his own issues and expressing his emotional struggles and deciding to begin the journey of the album, a trip on a boat to wherever the current takes him. While his statements that he is “too vulnerable to kill” hints at the greater thematic statement that the album wants to make about developing oneself as an artist.
We see Quadeca set sail on the next two tracks, “RUIN MY LIFE” and “GODSTAINED,” the latter being the lead single for the album. “RUIN MY LIFE” discusses the beginning of the main character’s life, while “GODSTAINED” discusses Quadeca’s desire to return to that life or to recapture what he believed to make the past so great, while understanding that it’s clouded in nostalgia. On the final verse of the song, he raps “I been there and back, you didn’t even know about that / talk about one man’s trash you don’t even know about that.” That “trash” refers to a bottle he finds in the sea that he believes to contain a message, but lacks the answers he seeks. The inherent concept of a message being sent from the past via bottle is a very fascinating concept, but the idea of it being empty expresses the idea that he can’t go back to the past and figure out what it all means. Quadeca must move forward. He desires a return to what once made him great, but as such is almost denying the process he’s made from the past, both as an artist and as a person. But was he even happy then? Fear that time is passing you by and that you will never be able to return to a younger age is something that Quadeca has expressed before on previous works and seems to be a driving force in this album. On “RUIN MY LIFE” especially it opens with reminiscing about “when he was young,” yet in the same stanza acknowledges that he is still young despite everything. So how can we cope with that fear of aging, knowing that there’s still so much aging to do?
The album docks on shore for the next two tracks “AT A TIME LIKE THIS” and “MONDAY.” Both of which express Quadeca’s desire to continue forth on his journey but this time with an understanding that he has time and can meander for a bit. For better or for worse, where “AT A TIME LIKE THIS” finds beauty in waiting while “MONDAY” wades in the tragedy of a failed relationship. The chorus of “Darling, don’t you give up on a Monday” being both a cry for the relationship to not end, as well as a cry for Quadeca to not give up on himself. This album writes really well about the niche feeling of that nagging feeling to give up but knowing that you can’t for some unknown reason which comes across extremely well with the beautiful lyricism of “MONDAY” and the gorgeous accompanying instrumentation.
By “DANCING WITHOUT MOVING,” Quadeca is back on the sea and will remain on his journey till the penultimate track of the album. The next few tracks continue Quadeca’s rumination on life and change until falling asleep at the end of “THAT’S WHY” and then dreaming about sinking on the fittingly titled “I DREAM ABOUT SINKING.” When he awakes on “NATURAL CAUSES,” he’s being chased by some unknown entity, perhaps that same feeling to continue forward despite the constant aching to give up. The never ending ambition of the voyage being motivated by something, even if Quadeca doesn’t know what that is. He’s made it farther than most others who have attempted this journey, remarking that “all of them died this morning,” yet he survives. Quadeca alone remains triumphant. Then the storm comes.
“THUNDRRR” is such an intense emotional shift on the album that it is fitting that it has some of, if not the, best production on a song released this decade. It’s braggadocious and intense in a way no other song on this album was, almost reminiscent of Songs I Will Never Release. It’s an incredible cross between his earlier works and the remarkable depth of production ingenuity he has developed in the almost decade he’s been making music. But from the storm comes “THE GREAT BAKANAWA.”
Backed by the same intensity of “THUNDRRR” but with a different, far more sinister tone, Danny Brown continues his streak of rapping from the perspective of ambivalent forces of death on Quadeca full length conceptual projects. Quadeca has yet to finish his journey and is confronted by The Great Bakanawa, a mythological being from the Philippines with the power to eat moons. A creature that Quadeca, no matter how hard he tries, is not able to defeat. The end is near for him and it awaits with open arms.
The last two tracks see Quadeca’s dream become a reality, as it details his death and specifically the moments before it. He finds solace in his passing and finds that even as he dies, his journey was worth it and that there is satisfaction in the simple joy of life and the magnificence of creating art for the sake of creating art. The final track contains a feature from the band Maruja, a band that’s also released a critically acclaimed debut album this year entitled Pain to Power. The lead singer of Maruja closes out the album while descending into the depths of the water and making peace with death on the behalf of Quadeca’s character. He has passed, but he lived a good life. A somber thought for someone so young, but one that is very easily understandable when you look from his perspective.
Because we’re so early into his career I don’t want to call Vanisher Quadeca’s magnum opus, but if it ends up being the defining album of his career I would not be surprised. Vanisher, Horizon Scraper is the pinnacle of production and lyricism from this year as far as I’m concerned and is such an incredible step in the grand scheme of Quadeca’s career. It’s such a promising sight for anyone who wants to do greater in life, that Quadeca has been able to make something so incredible out of a career that started out so meager. Vanisher details how Quadeca views his life and his artistic output at this point in his life that I find so beautiful and relatable that I cannot recommend this album enough. Vanisher, Horizon Scraper is a perfect album in my eyes.
