Today, Yung Lean announces his new album Starz due May 15th via YEAR0001. The album is Lean's seventh full-length following 2018's Poison Ivy and includes previously released singles "Boylife in EU," "Violence," and "Pikachu" - releasing today. Diverging from the darker hues of recent singles, "Pikachu" presents a light-hearted and blasé Yung Lean skipping tongue-in-cheek around whitearmor's chopped up, hyper melodic production. Clocking in at just over 2 minutes, "Pikachu" is Yung Lean at his most forthright and elemental, mischievous and electrifying in his delivery as he places another piece of the puzzle that is to become Starz.
ABOUT YUNG LEAN:
Born Jonatan Leandoer Håstad, Yung Lean spent his early childhood in Asia and Eastern Europe before his family - his mother is a human rights activist and his father a writer - settled in Stockholm. A restless kid, Lean was world-famous as a teen, when his sly first music videos filled many in the press with confusion and awe. He was "the weirdest 16-year-old white Swedish rapper you'll hear this week," as one early headline put it.
Now he's 23, and quick novelty has long given way to sustained depth, relentless creative ambition, and real complexity. The airy, invincible sense of humor of his debut mixtape, Unknown Death 2002, turned to suffocating paranoia (and real-life tragedy) by the time of his second studio album, Warlord, in 2016. That same year, he appeared on Frank Ocean's Blonde and released a scuzzy punk record with longtime producer Gud. By 2018, he'd spun around again, collaborating on an award-winning ballet and winning a Swedish Grammy.
"A lot of people are like, 'It started as a meme and became something serious,'" Lean said recently, after receiving the Bram Stoker Medal of Cultural Achievement at Trinity College. "But for me, it's always been sincere. I've been the same person. It's just people didn't get it at first."
His most recent full-length, 2019's Nectar, was easily his most far-out: credited to Jonatan Leandoer96, it found a new type of freedom with poetic art rock and drew comparisons to Bob Dylan and Beck. Notably, the album came within days of a more straightforward Lean rap single produced by Working On Dying (Lil Uzi Vert, Drake). Less a reaction or evolution, this was more like a rare gem rotating, showing new and unexpected facets.
Yung Lean
Starz
May 15, 2020
