Yung Lean - Starz
Time to stop worrying and adore Yung Lean...
Jonatan Leandoer Håstad is an enigma. He seems to have been around forever, but every time he puts a new release out as his *Yung Lean* rap persona, it’s as though you’re hearing about him for the first time.
His breakout track, 'Ginseng Strip 2002', has almost 30m views on YouTube, but you can’t be certain how many of those viewers were there for the music (and not the bucket hats and lyrical zingers.) He clearly laid the foundations for the modern crop of sad-rappers but has received a fraction of the recognition that he deserves. He was awarded the Bram Stoker Medal of Cultural Achievement at Trinity College, Dublin and referred to the institution as 'Hogwarts'.
Fitting then, that the marquee name collaborator on this album is Ariel Pink, who is quite the enigma himself. Both artists have been incredibly influential on their own music scene, their huge discographies plundered by other artists seeking inspiration. Both artists are obviously highly intelligent, playing a game of ‘guess the bullshit’ with their listeners, who are either oblivious to their jokes or completely besotted with them, although they both pale in comparison to Frank Zappa, who was probably the first to try out deliberately alienate his listeners to see who stuck around.
The track that Ariel Pink appears on, the title track, isn’t what rock fans might expect rap music to sound like at all – it’s a dream-pop song run through a trap filter, like a modern remix of a classic 80s tune. In fact, the majority of the album plays out in this vein: the trap drums/airy synth/delicate singing/breathy rapping combination is the basic template for most of the tracks, and it gives the album an icy detachment that’s more hypnotic than horrific.
‘Starz’ opens with its heaviest cut, ‘My Agenda’, which totally misrepresents the rest of the album. It’s dense, paranoid and aggressively structured – nothing else on the record comes close to its level of intensity. Squealing, fuzzing electro-shock waves of sound repeatedly crash across the stereo field: Lean uses noise like a weapon, wielding feedback like Sonic Youth.
‘Yayo’ and ‘Butterfly Paralyzed’ both showcase Lean’s ability to graft chrome-plated hooks onto any track he likes. The former is sparse and simple where the latter is full to the point of overload, but both tracks sound like evolved versions of songs you’d hear on the radio – music for a society of cyborgs.
Too often, Lean finds himself retreading old ground, ground that his disciples and followers have since taken to the top of the charts. ‘Outta My Head’ occupies a space that Post Malone regularly shoots for, and ‘Iceheart’ could be anybody (luckily it’s only two minutes long). You’ll soon be hearing a million rip-offs of ‘Acid At 7/11’, such is the quality of Lean’s writing on the track. ‘Dance In The Dark’ is a looming, ominous banger with sinister vocals and a ghostly synth haze filling every syllable of silence with a sense of dread. Other successes are the introspective ‘Low’, the melancholy heat of ‘Boylife in EU’ and the obnoxiously catchy ‘Hellraiser’.
If this were any number of other artists, it’d be hailed as a masterpiece. If this were a statement album by a generic pop-rapper we’d all be praising it like the baby Jesus. No amount of Frank Ocean collabs, Travis Scott features, culture awards or YouTube millions will ever convince some folks to get over themselves and give Lean a chance, and that’s too bad.
*7/10 *
Words: *Ross Horton*
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