Why Yung Lean is Not a Joke and Why You Should Appreciate the S A D B O Y S

Why Yung Lean is Not a Joke and Why You Should Appreciate the S A D B O Y S

By Gerrit Postema

This is not an article that will tell you who Yung Lean is or what S A D B O Y S are. Many people like you, dear reader, are/have been confused about what that goofy white boy from Sweden is doing wearing bucket hats and rapping about promethazine, Arizona Iced tea, and Louis Vuitton duffel bags flled with heroin. This article will not give you a background about Jonatan Leandoer Håstad because I’m sure you are entirely capable of googling and fnding out for yourself what stay sad 2002 means. This article is instead about what Yung Lean isn’t and what his new album offers.

First: Yung Lean is not an internet joke meant to fool people into taking anything labeled as “rap” seriously. It never was. In the beginning, Yung Lean and his friend Yung Gud were just making beats and raps as a hobby, making an odd mixture of vapory beats and outsider art mumbling. As outsider art often is, people discovered it and found the unusual sound interesting, especially coupled with the visuals of a 16-year-old Yung Lean cooking like Lil B in his music videos.

Second: Yung Lean is not a one-trick pony who keeps rehashing the same formula and relying on his group of rabid fans to buy the living hell out of it. (Yung Lean is not BLΔNK BΔNSHEE, another artist who was initially popular with roughly the same crowd) Listening to Yung Lean’s frst album, Unknown Death 2002, then his single “Kyoto,” then his most recent album, Unknown Memory, released less than a month ago, you can clearly hear the evolution of Yung Lean’s sound from the barely audible verses and Yung Gud’s vapor-wave-esque beats channeling almost equal parts Clams Casino and Macintosh Plus to the newage, extended synth-heavy, cloudy instrumentals that have all the same interest, intrigue, and Ableton choral suite starter pack hooks as Gud’s original work but with the added strength of the new Yung Lean. If there’s anyone who’s grown to love and evolve with Yung Lean’s music it’s Jonatan Leandoer himself. Nobody has grown into the sadboy sound more than Yung Lean, going from his mumbling off-beat but adorable 16-year old self who seems constantly surprised and anxious to fnd out what his voice sounds like on the other side of a microphone to an 18-year old man who’s embraced his life, rapping with more braggadocio, body, and confdence than ever before. His voice and delivery are far from mainstream and can still be considered an acquired taste, but Yung Lean has grown into his part and even if he was once a joke, he’s not anymore. As he says on “Monster” in one of his most mature tracks to date: “Used to be a hobby now it’s all I think about/that’s what rap does.”

Third: Yung Lean is not the 3.8 of Unknown Memory on Pitchfork, who fnds issue with his voice and lambasts him for “cheap copies of his actual role models.” I’m not trying to criticize Pitchfork here, Pitchfork is what Pitchfork is, but their opinion is often brought up as a criticism of Yung Lean. Yung Lean is vapor-rap in the purest sense that it takes themes from mainstream rap and churns them through the great machine of internet culture and endows them with futuristic and retro aspects while managing to create something unique. Yung Lean mashes discussions of slinging drugs, sipping lean, fuckin hoes, and Transformers references into one emblematic mix that is uniquely his, nothing close to a “cheap copy.” Gangster rap is music that was raised and created in the hood and in the gang culture while Yung Lean is internet rap in the same sense. Yung Lean is part of the “post-internet” generation and he grew up in an age where the internet was integrated into everyday life. He’s rapping about what he knows, creating a surprisingly relatable mix that manages to create a mélange of internet cultures and infuences while being easily recognizable to any other member of the “post-internet” generation while being unrecognizable and strange to those who grew up without the internet. As strange as it seems, Yung Lean is not a joke, just a musical example of the experiences of every teenager on the internet, which might be not a typical background of music but is still a legitimate and untapped lifestyle to make music about.