On his predominant account, Yung Lean raps deliriously about racking up stacks and tablets, doing acid at 7/11, being haunted by nightmares of furnishings coming alive over starry, frenetic beats. However his alt, jonatan leandoer96, is reserved for extra stripped-down, intimate cuts, the place he’d sing about dying for somebody’s love over a mild raindrop of an instrumental. Over the previous couple of years, these two sides of himself have more and more fused into one. Yung Lean is now targeted on matrimony, youngsters, fraternal devotion, the straightforward bliss of an understated, mundane life. “The celebration is formally over,” he declared in a latest viral clip. “The sheer Diddy-ness of issues” has gotten uncontrolled.
So “Ceaselessly Yung,” the lead single off his upcoming album, Jonatan, holds a funeral for his outdated way of life and self. This simply might’ve been a jonatan leandoer96 monitor, and even a Sparks tune, for that matter. As a lot because it broadcasts a persona evolution, it feels like he’s in sonic stasis: He sings about going via ups and downs, being reborn like a Phoenix from the ashes, over a jaunty but inflexible one-note bassline that conjures up a pressured march to salvation. Within the video, he buries a crown-wearing double of himself in a coffin, waving to a mass of people that’ve gathered to observe, then driving away.
A decade in the past, Lean was driving a motorbike throughout a mud-drenched cemetery, droning balefully about waking up sticky with liquor, arms stuffed with cash and Xans. I miss the thrilling sound of that period, but it surely’s candy to see him coming to peace together with his demons, nevertheless lengthy that lasts.
