Ghostemane

Eric Whitney was born on April 15, 1991, in Lake Worth, Florida to parents from New York.[14] 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,[15] including Nemesis and Seven Serpents.[10][16] 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.[14]

Whitney was introduced to rap music when he was the guitarist in the hardcore punk band Nemesis and a bandmate introduced him to Memphis rap.[10]

Prior to his musical career, Whitney worked in several B2B sales positions.[14] In 2015, due to not being able to musically thrive in Southern Florida, Whitney moved to Los Angeles, California. He also gave up his employment.[15] Meeting up with JGRXXN, Whitney joined his collective Schemaposse, which included artists such as Craig Xen and Lil Peep.[17]

In April 2016, after just 1 year with the group, Whitney left Schemaposse.[18] 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,[19] who released the video for "1000 Rounds" with Ghostemane in April 2017.[20] The video quickly went viral, and as of May 2021, it had over 29 million views.[21]

In late 2017, Whitney saw greater success when art collective TRASH GANG created and released their 1930s cartoon edit music video for his song "Mercury: Retrograde". The cartoon was a 1933 Betty Boop short, Snow-White, featuring Cab Calloway as Koko the Clown singing St. James Infirmary. The video has since climbed to over 500 million views, making it his most well known single.[22]

In October 2018 he teamed up with Zubin to release a track titled Broken.[23] 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, Slipknot, 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).[24] Ghostemane was also the sole producer of his former fiancée Poppy's Christmas EP, A Very Poppy Christmas, released in December 2020.

In 2021, Ghostemane's music video "AI", directed by Nick Cinelli, was nominated for Most Bizarre at the Berlin Music Video Awards.[25]

Lyrically, Ghostemane's themes focus on occultism, depression, nihilism, death and illuminism. He started his career as a musician playing guitar in hardcore punk bands, and drums in doom metal bands.[11] He has stated that his biggest influence is black metal band Bathory.[10] 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.[26]

Current[27][28]

• Parv0 – DJ
• Nolan Nunes – bass
• Cayle Sain – drums

Former[29]

• Mark Bronzino – guitar

• Media related to Ghostemane at Wikimedia Commons