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,[1] including Nemesis and Seven Serpents.[9][13] 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 bandmate introduced him to Memphis rap.[9]

Prior to his musical career, Whitney was earning $65,000 annually in a B2B sales position.[12] In 2015, Whitney moved to Los Angeles, California due to his music not thriving in Southern Florida, giving up his employment at the same time.[1] Meeting up with JGRXXN, Whitney joined his collective Schemaposse which included artists such as Craig Xen and the now-deceased Lil Peep.[14]

In April 2016, Schemaposse disbanded leaving Whitney not associated with any group.[15] Whitney eventually began to associate with fellow Florida rapper Pouya.[16] Pouya released the video for "1000 Rounds" with Ghostemane in April 2017.[17] The video quickly went viral and as of May 2020, has nearly 23 million views.[18]

In May 2018, Pouya announced that he had a mixtape with Ghostemane in production.[19]

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, and even 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]

Lyrically, Ghostemane's themes focus around occultism, depression, nihilism, and death. Whitney started his career as a musician playing guitar in hardcore punk bands, drums in doom metal bands,[10] and 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. Ghostemane has also went on to cite Midwest rap group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony as an early influence. [22]