How Crankdat Beat Burnout With Flame-Throwing Middle Fingers and a Fan-First Mission

When the world was opening back up after the pandemic, Christian Smith, better known as Crankdat, found himself considering walking away from music altogether.

At that point, he'd been touring professionally since 2017 after dropping out of college to pursue music full-time. But after being dropped by his agency and watching bookings slow in an industry still adjusting to life post-global shutdown, he found himself questioning everything.

It was 2022 and the electronic dance music industry felt like it had reset. Momentum was hard to come by.

"I think my time's up, maybe it's time to just look at what's next for me in life," Smith recalls thinking in a candid interview with EDM.com. "Maybe I don't want to do anything in entertainment at all anymore. Maybe I want to go do something completely different."

An inflection point came that summer after a pivotal conversation with his manager, who challenged him to commit to just six more months and give it everything he had. "You've been giving it a hundred percent this whole time," he said his manager told him. "But give it 110%. Give it 120%."

So he did. "If you’re going to quit, who gives a shit anyway?" Smith recalled hearing. "Just throw everything you have at the wall and let’s see what shakes. So that's pretty much what I did."

That mindset shift was a turning point for the rising dubstep superstar, who stopped worrying about what others in the industry might think. He instead started taking creative risks, and they started to pay off.

With perfectionism no longer looming, Crankdat's early comeback was in full force. TikTok, once a platform he avoided, became the key that reignited everything. He launched a remix video series, posted weekly content and stayed constantly visible on the platform "until people couldn’t get away from me," he jokes.

The experiment worked as his channel ballooned to over 1 million followers, growing his fan base organically while reintroducing him to the EDM community. “It felt like I was starting over, but with experience this time," Smith says.

By early-2023, the Crankdat project exploded with "STFU," a dubstep smash currently on the precipice of 10 million Spotify streams. The viral hit helped transform Smith's burnout into the feeling of forward motion.

His cult following began translating over to the live music arena, culminating in a sold-out doubleheader at the famed Hollywood Palladium and a landmark set at North America's largest EDM festival, EDC Las Vegas, which became the most-attended performance in the history of its beloved bassPOD stage.

Since then, he’s been on a tear: a sold-out North American tour, "GET CRANKED!"; a surprise appearance to close out Coachella's storied Do LaB stage; a coveted night-time slot at Ultra Music Festival's 25th anniversary; and a pair of DJ sets at EDC Las Vegas.

Smith is now rolling into a jam-packed summer of festival sets at Bonnaroo, Electric Forest, Tomorrowland and HARD Summer, among many others. However, the North Star of his resurgence hasn't been the high-profile gigs, but his deep connection to his fans.

"We talk about it every single week," he says. "I say that line more than any other sentence in my entire life: fan experience is the number one priority."

That philosophy has shaped every aspect of his live show. At the Palladium, he debuted "Middle Fingers Up" (MFU), a giant pair of flame-throwing middle fingers tied to the lore of "STFU." What started as a one-off became a signature showpiece, later appearing at a secret show at Brooklyn's Under the K Bridge Park.

But that was just phase one. For his 2025 tour, he retired the "MFU" stage design and built something entirely new: the ambitious "Crank Deck." With its 360° stage design, the production brings fans in as close as possible—literally.

At each show, Smith and his team hand out Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-style "Golden Tickets" to diehard fans in GA, often those decked out in Crankdat jerseys or merch. The special passes grant access to an elevated area onstage so fans can experience the shows alongside their charismatic headliner.

This tour also marks Smith's first major-budget production, the development of which was "hands-on in the literal sense," he says. He flew in early to tour stops, worked alongside his crew at 9am load-ins and sometimes even built stage elements with his VJ just minutes before doors opened. Balancing large-scale production with this boots-on-the-ground energy is what makes Crankdat's shows feel personal, even as the rooms keep getting bigger.

Developed specifically with his fans in mind, the "Crank Deck" is complete with immersive lighting elements and headbang-ready railings, infrastructure he called "really complicated."

"Securing railings onto decking, because we wanted the railings to be headbang-able, we wanted the kids to be able to go ape-shit on those things," Smith explains. "And that’s actually really hard to do."

Another key addition? Lasers. Lots of lasers.

Smith spent a lot of time considering how the dispersion of lasers would make his fans feel, no matter where they are in the crowd. "It is more than just seeing them," he says. They have got to be going over their head so that they can look up and they're like, 'Holy shit.'"

But the connection doesn’t end when the lasers shut down. Through it all, a few things have stayed the same: build fearlessly and never take the crowd for granted.

"That is literally my favorite thing to do," Smith says of fans tagging him in videos. "Just laying in my hotel room and tapping through all the tags I get. It’s the closest I’ll ever get to watching my own show. Phones pick up the crowd reactions, especially during big SFX moments. That's what I want to feel. That’s the version of the show I care about the most."

And there’s plenty more new music on the way.

"I have more original music than I have had basically in the past two years combined," Smith confirms. "It's going to come out this year, which is going to be fun."

Follow Crankdat:

Instagram: instagram.com/crankdat
TikTok: tiktok.com/@crankdat
X: x.com/crankdat
Facebook: facebook.com/crankdat
Spotify: spoti.fi/3l8FXz0