On his major account, Yung Lean raps deliriously about racking up stacks and drugs, 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 few years, these two sides of himself have more and more fused into one. Yung Lean is now centered on matrimony, children, fraternal devotion, the easy bliss of an understated, mundane life. “The occasion is formally over,” he declared in a latest viral clip. “The sheer Diddy-ness of issues” has gotten uncontrolled.
So “Perpetually Yung,” the lead single off his upcoming album Jonatan, holds a funeral for his previous way of life and self. This simply may’ve been a jonatan leandoer96 monitor, or perhaps a Sparks music, for that matter. As a lot because it publicizes a persona evolution, it feels like he’s in sonic stasis: He sings about going by way of ups and downs, being reborn like a Phoenix from the ashes, over a jaunty but inflexible one-note bassline that conjures up a compelled 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 using a motorbike throughout a mud-drenched cemetery, droning balefully about waking up sticky with liquor, palms crammed with cash and Xans. I miss the thrilling sound of that period, however it’s candy to see him coming to peace along with his demons, nonetheless lengthy that lasts.