Between his 2021 breakout with NUMB and the album era, Christian Gates never went quiet. Dangerous State of Mind, released in July 2022, is a snapshot of that stretch: prolific, emotional, and unmistakably him.
The single-a-moment years
In this period Gates operated exactly the way he came up, releasing directly and often rather than disappearing for a year to build one big project. It is a strategy borrowed from the internet: stay present, feed the feed, keep the connection with the cult warm. Each single was a small event, a way to keep testing where his sound could go next without the pressure of an album rollout.
Title as thesis
The name says a lot about the lane he was in: heavy, internal, a little ominous, the gothic-pop edge Apple Music has noted in his work. Gates writes best from inside a bad headspace, and “Dangerous State of Mind” puts that plainly. It is the sound of an artist mapping the darker corners of his own head and inviting listeners in.
Proof that the momentum never stopped between the hits.
Where it sits
Songs like this are the connective tissue of his catalog, the steady stream between the landmark moments that kept him growing through 2022 and 2023, on the way to the EP Why Do I Hear Breathing? and eventually his debut album. None of them arrived by accident; they are the product of an artist who treats consistency as the strategy. Full catalog and dates in the wiki.