Yung Lean Opens Up: A Deep Dive into His Startlingly Candid Reflections

Since the release of Ginseng Strip 2002 in 2013, a generational anthem for the casualties of late-stage capitalism and collectors of AriZona Iced Tea, Yung Lean has lived and documented a thousand lives over nearly as many records.

As an unwitting architect of a significant post-Internet disruption alongside the Sad Boys, he has since released ten albums, four mixtapes, and several EPs under various pseudonyms (Jonatan Leandoer96, Död Mark, Metal Storm…) within a span of twelve years. His latest work, titled Jonatan, uses his first name.

A Proliferation of Collaborations and Aliases

Over more than a decade, the factional clashes between devoted fans and rap analysts have largely subsided. However, the myth surrounding the eternally youthful-looking rapper and the surreal effect his music has against the backdrop of a chaotic world persists.

While almost everything about him is known – his drug issues, regained sobriety, his manager’s death, his childhood, his discovered bipolarity in a psychiatric hospital, and his transition to adulthood at the height of his media exposure – and despite his insistence for over a decade not to overthink his music, Yung Lean continues to represent an image of our era: both enduring and perpetually elusive.

Taking pleasure in shattering his entire career narrative – sometimes a ghost haunting the productions of the ingenious Dean Blunt, an aged crooner, or an imitation of the late Daniel Johnston under the name Jonatan Leandoer96, a lazy rapper wannabe, a punk leader with Död Mark, a favorite artist of our favorite artists – he has emerged as one of the most significant figures (or disfigures) in our century’s music. Global yet self-contained, detached yet desperately emo.

This fifth solo album, released under his original name, emerges as a curious musical object that shines with its literalness, marking a peak in his (inevitably uneven) discography. By merging Yung Lean and Jonatan Leandoer96 into his real identity, Jonatan Aron Leandoer Håstad reveals more of himself.

A Loyalty to His Rap Roots

Having started this trend last year with the alternative rock of Psykos (in collaboration with Bladee), Jonatan reunites the fragmented personas of Yung Lean in one place, with one voice, which could be considered among the most beautiful and heart-wrenching in contemporary music.

Here, the dream of becoming a semblance of Gucci Mane or a prototype Lil B (with all its problematic aspects) has faded, but the love for rap remains (Teenage Symphonies 4 God, Terminator Symphony) serving a record that is quintessentially Lean. A record that, perhaps for the first time, presents a complete and faithful image of Yung Lean as an artist.

In the lead single from Jonatan, Forever Yung – whose music video features his funeral procession as well as his rebirth – the role-playing, borrowed names, or memes that catapulted his career have disappeared. Yung Lean has found the balance point in his shaky career. Free to thrive as the Scott Walker or Leonard Cohen of his era, with productions enhanced by Rami Dawod’s arrangements.

Reflecting his era, by finding a balance between his original neurasthenic rap, folk culture (Swan Song), guitar-driven hauntological music (Dean Blunt, Iceage, Bar Italia…), and his disenchanted poetry carried by a voice of haunting falseness, Yung Lean records something of his time.

In a way, that’s what he has always done. But listening to the stunning Horses, Swan Song, Babyface Maniacs, I’m Ur Dirt, I’m Ur Love, or Changes, it seems Yung Lean may have found a way to conjure rather than endure it. The existential void is still there, underlying, in his fractured voice, in these haunted productions sometimes reminiscent of Oneohtrix Point Never, in these walls of saturated guitars, but, by piecing together the fragments of his multi-faceted identity, Jonatan learns to fill it.

Jonatan (World Affairs/Awal/Sony Music). Released on May 2. Live at Zénith Paris – La Villette on November 24.