When the world was opening again up after the pandemic, Christian Smith, higher often known as Crankdat, discovered himself contemplating strolling away from music altogether.
At that time, he’d been touring professionally since 2017 after dropping out of school to pursue music full-time. However after being dropped by his company and watching bookings gradual in an business nonetheless adjusting to life post-global shutdown, he discovered himself questioning the whole lot.
It was 2022 and the digital dance music business felt prefer it had reset. Momentum was exhausting to come back by.
“I believe my time’s up, possibly it is time to simply have a look at what’s subsequent for me in life,” Smith remembers pondering in a candid interview with EDM.com. “Possibly I do not need to do something in leisure in any respect anymore. Possibly I need to go do one thing utterly totally different.”
c/o Press
An inflection level got here that summer time after a pivotal dialog together with his supervisor, Mike Lisanti, who challenged him to commit to simply six extra months and provides it the whole lot he had. “You have been giving it 100% this complete time,” he mentioned Lisanti informed him on the time. “However give it 110%. Give it 120%.”
So he did. “In case you’re going to stop, who provides a shit anyway?” Smith recalled listening to. “Simply throw the whole lot you’ve got on the wall and let’s see what shakes. In order that’s just about what I did.”
That mindset shift was a turning level for the rising dubstep celebrity, who stopped worrying about what others within the business may assume. He as an alternative began taking artistic dangers, and so they began to repay.
With perfectionism not looming, Crankdat’s early comeback was in full pressure. TikTok, as soon as a platform he averted, turned the important thing that reignited the whole lot. He launched a remix video sequence, posted weekly content material and stayed continuously seen on the platform “till folks couldn’t get away from me,” he jokes.
The experiment labored as his channel ballooned to over 1 million followers, rising his fan base organically whereas reintroducing him to the EDM neighborhood. “It felt like I used to be beginning over, however with expertise this time,” Smith says.
By early-2023, the Crankdat mission exploded with “STFU,” a dubstep smash presently on the precipice of 10 million Spotify streams. The viral hit helped remodel Smith’s burnout into the sensation of ahead movement.
His cult following started translating over to the reside music enviornment, culminating in a sold-out doubleheader on the famed Hollywood Palladium and a landmark set at North America’s largest EDM competition, EDC Las Vegas, which turned the most-attended efficiency within the historical past of its beloved bassPOD stage.
Since then, he’s been on a tear: a sold-out North American tour, “GET CRANKED!”; a shock look to shut out Coachella’s storied Do LaB stage; a coveted night-time slot at Extremely Music Pageant’s twenty fifth anniversary; and a pair of DJ units at EDC Las Vegas.
Smith is now rolling right into a jam-packed summer time of competition units at Bonnaroo, Electrical Forest, Tomorrowland and HARD Summer season, amongst many others. Nonetheless, the North Star of his resurgence hasn’t been the high-profile gigs, however his deep connection to his followers.
“We speak about it each single week,” he says. “I say that line greater than another sentence in my total life: fan expertise is the primary precedence.”
That philosophy has formed each side of his reside present. On the Palladium, he debuted “Center Fingers Up” (MFU), an enormous pair of flame-throwing center fingers tied to the lore of “STFU.” What began as a one-off turned a signature showpiece, later showing at a secret present at Brooklyn’s Beneath the Okay Bridge Park.
c/o Press
However that was simply part one. For his 2025 tour, he retired the “MFU” stage design and constructed one thing completely new: the bold “Crank Deck.” With its 360° stage design, the manufacturing brings followers in as shut as attainable—actually.
At every present, Smith and his group hand out Charlie and the Chocolate Manufacturing unit-style “Golden Tickets” to diehard followers in GA, typically these decked out in Crankdat jerseys or merch. The particular passes grant entry to an elevated space onstage so followers can expertise the exhibits alongside their charismatic headliner.
This tour additionally marks Smith’s first major-budget manufacturing, the event of which was “hands-on within the literal sense,” he says. He flew in early to tour stops, labored alongside his crew at 9am load-ins and typically even constructed stage parts together with his VJ simply minutes earlier than doorways opened. Balancing large-scale manufacturing with this boots-on-the-ground vitality is what makes Crankdat’s exhibits really feel private, even because the rooms maintain getting larger.
Developed particularly together with his followers in thoughts, the “Crank Deck” is full with immersive lighting parts and headbang-ready railings, infrastructure he known as “actually sophisticated.”
“Securing railings onto decking, as a result of we needed the railings to be headbang-able, we needed the youngsters to have the ability to go ape-shit on these issues,” Smith explains. “And that’s really actually exhausting to do.”
One other key addition? Lasers. Numerous lasers.
Smith spent plenty of time contemplating how the dispersion of lasers would make his followers really feel, regardless of the place they’re within the crowd. “It’s extra than simply seeing them,” he says. They’ve to be going over their head in order that they’ll search for and so they’re like, ‘Holy shit.'”
However the connection doesn’t finish when the lasers shut down. Via all of it, just a few issues have stayed the identical: construct fearlessly and by no means take the gang as a right.
“That’s actually my favourite factor to do,” Smith says of followers tagging him in movies. “Simply laying in my resort room and tapping via all of the tags I get. It’s the closest I’ll ever get to watching my very own present. Telephones choose up the gang reactions, particularly throughout large SFX moments. That is what I need to really feel. That’s the model of the present I care about essentially the most.”
And there’s lots extra new music on the way in which.
“I’ve extra unique music than I’ve had principally up to now two years mixed,” Smith confirms. “It may come out this 12 months, which goes to be enjoyable.”
Observe Crankdat:
Instagram: instagram.com/crankdat
TikTok: tiktok.com/@crankdat
X: x.com/crankdat
Fb: facebook.com/crankdat
Spotify: spoti.fi/3l8FXz0
