A 400 word review of: Yung Lean and his new album 'Stranger'.
The music genre has been on the move lately with the establishment of trap music, however other boundaries in rap are also being pushed. Jonatan Leandoer Håstad, better known as Yung Lean has inscribed his name deeply into the genre of cloud rap. Cloud rap is a microgenre of hip hop music that is typically characterized by its lo-fi production and distorted sense. Born from the internet through Tumblr and SoundCloud, Lean sings with sentiment and passion but with a tone of weakness as he uses music to escape his rotten past.
The music genre has been on the move lately with the establishment of trap music, however other boundaries in rap are also being pushed. Jonatan Leandoer Håstad, better known as Yung Lean has inscribed his name deeply into the genre of cloud rap. Cloud rap is a microgenre of hip hop music that is typically characterized by its lo-fi production and distorted sense. Born from the internet through Tumblr and SoundCloud, Lean sings with sentiment and passion but with a tone of weakness as he uses music to escape his rotten past.
Lean’s career started when he met
Yung Sherman and Yung Gud, his future producers, in a local park by chance. “We drunk beer and listened to
Robb Bank$ and just started connecting”. Yung Lean in 2012 after creating an
outlandish friendship with Yung Gud and Yung Sherman devised the group ‘Sad
Boys’. Yung Lean’s popularity grew within SoundCloud and eventually Lean
announced a European tour in 2013. Yung Lean released two more albums: ‘Unknown
Death 2002’ and ‘Unknown Memory’ in early 2014. after finishing their US east
coast tour In 2015 he landed a studio contract deal with ‘Pink House’ which is
located down by the ocean in Miami in a pink house unsurprisingly.
In Spring 2015 tragedy struck.
After finishing recording in Miami, Yung Gud and Yung Sherman flew back to
Sweden and left Lean. Lean’s stage name comes from his given name, but also
from lean – codeine syrup. Lean became heavily addicted to drugs, not only to
lean, but to Xanax and cocaine. He mixed them frequently and started deviating
into different characters. “He started dressing like a nurse” and “carried a
knife, he even wrote a book that retold childhood nightmares about people
turning into rats”. In April 2015 Lean happened to have a nose bleed, his
girlfriend at the time was calling him and by chance they both had nose bleeds.
Lean overwhelmed by drugs and the feeling of connectedness trashed his condo
through madness. Yung Lean was admitted into a mental hospital that day.
Yung Lean went into
hiding for a year in Sweden. Returning mid-November 2017, coated in tattoos he
dropped the album ‘Stranger’. This album is revolutionary in the genre of cloud
rap and tells us about his blackened mentality under drugs and is a lesson to
us all. Yung Lean is one to keep an eye on in future years.
Published in the Wellingtonian, April 2017.
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