Ghostemane

Eric Whitney was born on April 15, 1991 in Lake Worth, Florida to parents from New York.[12] Whitney grew up in West Palm Beach, Florida. As a teenager, he was mainly interested in hardcore punk music. He learned to play the guitar and performed in several bands,[13] including Nemesis and Seven Serpents.[9][14] He also played football while he was in high school, saying he was practically forced to by his father, who died when Whitney was seventeen.[12]

Whitney was introduced to rap music when he was the guitarist in the hardcore punk band Nemesis and a band mate introduced him to Memphis rap.[9]

Prior to his musical career, Whitney worked in several B2B sales positions.[12] In 2015, Whitney moved to Los Angeles, California due to his not musically thriving in Southern Florida. He also gave up his employment.[13] Meeting up with JGRXXN, Whitney joined his collective Schemaposse, which included artists such as Craig Xen and Lil Peep.[15]

In April 2016, after just 1 year with the group, Whitney left Schemaposse.[16] He subsequently released his self-produced album "Blackmage" and his first cinematic music video with his single "John Dee". Whitney eventually began to associate with fellow Florida rapper Pouya.[17] Pouya released the video for "1000 Rounds" with Ghostemane in April 2017.[18] The video quickly went viral and as of August 2020, has over 24 million views.[19]

In 2018, Whitney saw greater success when art collective TRASH GANG created and released their 1930s cartoon edit music video for his song Mercury: Retrograde. The video has since climbed to over 279 million views, making his most well known single.

In October 2018 he teamed up with Zubin to release a track titled Broken.[20] Also in 2018, he released his seventh studio album, N/O/I/S/E, in which many of the songs are influenced by industrial metal, nu metal, Metallica, Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails. In May 2020, he unveiled his latest project, a lo-fi black metal band called Baader-Meinhof, of which he is the sole member (credited as Eric Ghoste).[21] Ghostemane is also the sole producer of his fiancée Poppy's Christmas EP A Very Poppy Christmas released in December 2020.

Lyrically, Ghostemane's themes focus around occultism, depression, nihilism, and death. He started his career as a musician playing guitar in hardcore punk bands, and drums in doom metal bands.[10] He has stated that his biggest influence is black metal band Bathory.[9] He spent most of his teenage years listening to extreme metal bands such as Deicide, Death, Carcass and Mayhem.[7] In terms of rap music, Ghostemane is influenced by Southern rap groups such as Outkast and Three 6 Mafia. He has also gone on to cite Midwest rap group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony as an early influence. [22]

In October 2019, Ghostemane began dating musician/YouTuber Poppy. In July 2020, Poppy announced on social media that the two were engaged.[23][24]

• Media related to Ghostemane at Wikimedia Commons