Several of 2017’s hip-hop chart breakthroughs have one thing in common: they’re sad, despairing and desolate. Take Post Malone’s ‘Rockstar’, Lil Uzi Vert’s ‘XO Tour Llif3’ or Future’s ‘Mask Off’. All three coat big hooks in tales of bleak, nihilistic excess. This isn’t a new trend by any stretch. In fact, Yung Lean was already mastering the same subjects aged 16.
In 2012, the Swedish rapper – real name Jonatan Leandoer Håstad – made apathy and despondency his winning formula. Breakthrough viral track ‘Ginseng Strip 2002’ is a nostalgia-laced tale of STIs and opiates that kickstarted Lean’s Sad Boy movement (the name given to his Stockholm crew and bucket hat-wearing fans). Since then, Håstad has steered his codeine-soaked songs in the direction of pop. Referring to himself in the third person, he told NME in 2016, “Lean could be on some Sid Vicious punk st one day, and then on some heartbroken Justin Timberlake / Nelly Furtado st.”
‘Stranger’ doesn’t go full Timberlake, but he’s getting there. ‘Red Bottom Sky’ is a sparse tale of tragedy, while the pent-up and riled beat for ‘Skimask’ could easily be mistaken for a Weeknd hit.
But Yung Lean still lacks quality control. The middle bulk of ‘Stranger’ can feel like being suspended in ice, experiencing a never-ending comedown. All loose keys and vague, drug-fuelled boasts, he rarely finds a hook to match the likes of ‘Rockstar’ or ‘Mask Off’. There’s one big exception: ‘Agony’ is a gorgeously honest song, starved of the default sheen that lets down a lot of ‘Stranger’. Over a meditative piano loop, Håstad sings, “When I’m afraid I lose my mind / It’s fine, it happens all the time”.
‘Agony’ highlights the difference between Yung Lean and his more chart-glued contemporaries. While their songs are catch-all anthems of overindulgence, his stories feel real and personal. In 2016, his former manager died in a car crash, and he checked into a mental hospital. Tragedy surrounds Yung Lean’s work, and ‘Stranger’’s best moments find him channelling turmoil into something cathartic.
