brakence

brakence, born Randy Findell on December 17, 2001, is an American singer, producer, and songwriter from the Columbus, Ohio area who emerged from the online ‘anti-pop’ and bedroom-pop scenes of the late 2010s. His music blends distorted, glitchy production with raw, emotionally direct vocals, drawing loose comparisons to artists like EDEN and Jeremy Zucker while carving out a sound defined by abrupt tonal shifts, digital noise, and confessional lyrics about anxiety, heartbreak, and self-doubt.

His breakthrough came with the 2020 album punk2, written in the aftermath of dropping out of Ohio State University after only a few weeks — an event that became a defining narrative thread of the record. The album's success led to a deal with Columbia Records and a subsequent rerelease, helping him build a devoted online fanbase drawn to his unpolished, hyper-online aesthetic.

Songs such as «5g», «fwb», «deepfake», and «introvert» showcase his knack for pairing catchy hooks with jarring production choices, while «venus fly trap» and «dropout» reflect the more melodic, pop-leaning direction he pursued as he moved toward his major-label era. brakence's genre-blurring style — pulling from pop, electronic, rap, and R&B — has made him a notable figure in the hyperpop-adjacent and emo-rap crossover space of the early 2020s.