You can find the article here, but our conversation was pretty cool and I couldn't fit everything I wanted to in it the allotted word count. Here's the full transcript, in which Leandoer (yes, it really is his middle name) talks about the "Ginseng Strip 2002" recording session in Yung Gud's bedroom studio, his writing process, the difference between Unknown Death and Unknown Memory, and why the rest of the world fucks with American rap.
Yung Lean: Sup. Can you hear me?
Me: Yo! Yeah, I got you. Can you hear me?
YL: Yeah yeah yeah yeah, all good.
M: Cool. So yeah, thanks for taking the time to get on this chat with me today. How are you doing tonight? It’s 10 a.m. here but it’s like 7 at night there right?
YL: Yeah, exactly. I’m doing good man. Not doing much… Just chilling.
M: Word. And you’re in Sweden.. you’re not on tour yet, but you have a big one coming up?
YL: Right now in a couple of days were going to New York…
M: Oh yea, that’s that big show with Goth Money and Yung Gleesh and stuff right?
YL: Yeah, I think so.
M: Did you get to meet Gleesh when you guys did that collab track (“It’s Sad Boy”) or did you just send files to each other?
YL: We just sent files.. he called me and was like “YO YUNG LEAN. I’m at Chief Keef’s house. Can I do the chorus?” I’m like yeah of course you can do the chorus… that’s about it.
M: Crazy. What was that feeling like when you picked up and it was him on the other line?
YL: It was GLEETCHIE.
M: Haha, so gleetchie. So anyways, I wanted to get a couple things straight. Your middle name is really Leandoer..
YL: Yep. Here’s my passport. [pulls out passport, shows to camera]. Yung Lean right there.
M: Is that like a family name then?
YL: Yeah, its from my grandma, from back in the day… we come from Holland or something.. way back, way back. Its not a stupid Swedish kid that puts lean and doing together, that’s my fuckin middle name.
M: So going back to the start – I’m sure you’re kinda tired of talking about it, but the “Ginseng Strip 2002” song. It was your first really big song, and you wrote it when you were super young..
YL: Yeah I was 15 when I wrote that song. I recorded it when I was 16 at [Sad Boys producer] Yung Gud’s house in his room. He had like a little setup.. like a microphone and shit. And I was just like… I started writing lyrics when I was young, and when I turned like 15, 16, I thought I had found my style. So I just, you know… I was just confident that I was a good rapper. I wasn’t confident in anything else except for the fact that, you know, I was the shit. There were a lot of people at Yung Guds place recording and shit… and I didn’t know any of them, it was like real hip-hop heads… and I got on the mic and I did one take for the whole “Ginseng Strip” song. Like one take everything. And everyone’s like “what the fuck is he rapping about?” And then all these other guys, they came up to the mic and were doing tracks on Yung Gud beats and they had like “bars” and stuff. And then when we listened to everything we recorded, everyone wanted to hear “Ginseng Strip”… they were like “play that lil Lean shit back.”
M: Haha damn, yeah. The video has over 3 million plays in a year a half now. Where’d you shoot it? Did you just do it randomly on the spot one day?
YL: We shot it when I was still in high school.. in my 10th year in school, whatever its called. I was 16, it was like after school.. me and my friend Digi Ferrari were like “yo, we gotta start shooting videos.” We were just like every night at someone’s place you know, cooking food, drinking, smoking, filming, freestyling and whatnot. Then we’d go somewhere and get kicked out of a club and he’d just film us, you know, screaming at rich kids and shit. He was just filming what we were doing, he has a lot of unreleased material of us recording “Gatorade” and tracks like that. We just after school found some good spots… we wanted to film it and make it not look like Stockholm. Like it could be anywhere.
M: Going back to writing process, do you do most of your stuff in one take? Or do you write stuff on your iphone? Do you write stuff down with a pen and paper?
YL: I do anything. I write shit down in my iphone whenever I think of something. If I’m in the studio or the booth, it’s whatever comes to your mind. I can write with pen and paper as well, I can freestyle.. but that first take, that’s the most raw. If that’s good, if the first take’s good, then the song is good.
M: That’s what’s up. So how long did it take to write and record the new album “Unknown Memory?”
YL: Not long. Writing is like.. you can’t put a timeline on that. Some songs I wrote when I heard the beat, some lyrics have been in my phone for like.. I don’t know, a long time. We recorded that in like 2-3 weeks. We really took the time.. for like 2-3 weeks we were intensely recording. After we did “Kyoto” we made “Yoshi City” and “Ice Cold Smoke” and we were like “oh shit, this is what the album’s gonna sound like.” So after [all that] we went on a tour, took a break from the album, then we came back and I was like “fuck touring, I want to make music.” So we just did the album like that.
M: You sound a lot older… more experienced or whatever on “Unknown Memory.” There’s a line on that song “Monster” where you say “used to be a hobby, now it’s all I think about/that’s what rap does“
YL: That’s what rap does. Yeah.
M: So how is your life different now since your rap career took off? What’s it like now? Positives and negatives.
YL: Before it kinda sucked, now its kinda “turnt up.” I don’t know. Poor choice of words, but I don’t know. I like have space and a budget for my ideas. Before it was just like, I wanted to do so much shit but I couldn’t do it. Cuz no one wanted to do shit for us. Now if I have a good idea we can actually get it out.
M: Like riding around on the quads in the “Kyoto” video?
YL: Yeah, exactly! Yeah, yeah, yeah.
M: That looked like it was a lot of fun to shoot.
YL: Yeah, that was fun. It’s all in good fun. If it’s not in good fun then fuck it.
M: And going back to how you started rapping – what was the very first rap song you remember hearing? Or what was the first album you owned?
YL: “Patiently Waiting” by 50 cent and Eminem. I just really liked that like monotone flow.. “I been patiently waiting for a track to explode on..” That whole album “Get Rich Or Die Trying,” that was like the soundtrack to Yung Lean in like 4th or 5th grade. That was my shit.
M: And you were living in Sweden at the time?
YL: Uhh yeah.
M: Yeah, damn. That’s kinda crazy how Europe and the whole world have really come to love American rap.
YL: Yeah. Well obviously the US is the start of rap, the home of rap. It just makes so much more sense. In Europe we have like, what do we have? “Culture”… World War II, stuck-up French boys in Paris, fucking beautiful churches everywhere… we don’t really have that mentality of like, growing up on nothing and just following your dreams. That’s not a part of our culture or history. If we talk about big people in Europe they’re usually artists or creative or like.. I don’t know, Napoleon and shit.
M: Ha, right. It’s also crazy to me how at the same time that rap is getting more global, a lot of rap and even American pop music has taken a lot more from international electronic music.. like the tones, beats, tempos and stuff. Your music is a little bit of each. What do you think you sound like?
YL: You cant describe your sound, that’s like.. I don’t know, talking about food while eating it. You eat the food, then you talk about it. I really don’t know, you don’t really talk about a song… if we talk about sound you just compare it to other shit. Like “aw damn, this song sounds like 100 puppies running around in a field of oatmeal.” “Whoa, this sounds like Miley Cyrus on crack.” You have to like, use metaphors. It’s really lame to talk about.
M: Haha, fair enough. So how is “Unknown Memory” different from your last mixtape “Unknown Death” in your own words? You’re obviously in a different physical space with the touring and doing shows internationally and stuff, but you’re kind of in a different creative space too.
YL: Yeah.. “Unknown Death” is like this weird-ass homemade world, and that’s really what I wanted to create. Like a distinctive sound, something that makes you go “what the fuck is this,” but then you keep on listening to it. If you think about it, “Unknown Death” doesn’t make 100% sense, there’s a couple of tracks on there that don’t sound like other tracks. It was like I found my style, but not 100%. I think the main difference is that the sound of “Unknown Death” is quite dark but the lyrics are like happy, sort of references to Mario and nostalgic shit like Arizona, whilst “Unknown Memory,” the sound is more light, but the lyrics are darker… more honest. It’s like yin and yang, black and white.
M: Yeah I definitely picked that up on Unknown Memory. The beats sound all shiny and shimmery… some of the tones are so bright on it. But then the lyrics, you sound a lot older, maybe colder, more realistic..
YL: More honest.
M: Definitely. More honest and less in your own imagination.
YL: Yeah, it’s sorta like taking Yung Lean and taking him out of his box, and putting him in a studio.
M: Travi$ Scott is the only featured artist on the album. Was that intentional or did it just turn out that way?
YL: I don’t like seeing a tracklist with 100 features. If I were a Yung Lean fan I would just wanna hear Yung Lean songs. So the album was just completely solo. And then we get in touch with him and we’re like “alright, we need him on the album.” One feature and its gonna be from Travi$ Scott, that’s gonna be cool. I’m on his [forthcoming] album as well.. I have a verse on a song and apparently he put The Weeknd on it as well, so we’ll see how that turns out. He just sent me like 20 minutes of a looped beat and I just went in on like a 5-minute verse. And they just chop it up and shit.
M: Yeah, it’s crazy that’s how a lot of collabs are now, huh? Just kinda sending people files and seeing what they come up with.
YL: Yeah, I wouldn’t have anything against working in the same room, I just live on the other side of the globe so I’m fine with sending verses and whatnot.
M: Cool. And just to clarify – you hear it in the media all the time, but is it true that you learned English from listening to rap?
YL: No! They can suck my dick. Tell the media to suck my dick! Straight up. I’m not even gonna say how I learned English, but that’s not where it comes from.
M: Ha, I kinda figured. A lot of media types can be pretty irresponsible…
YL: Yeah, if they do their jobs they can find out that my grandpa is from England. I’m a quarter British. I’ve heard English since I was like 2.
M: Nice. So I’m doing this interview for the Seattle Times… you’ve never been to Seattle before?
YL: Nope.
M: I imagine growing up in Sweden is a lot like growing up here – it might be snow instead of rain but its just kinda dreary and grey all the time. That sadness is important in your music..
YL: Yeah, I don’t know, it’s good. You know, Kurt Cobain comes from Seattle. You need that darkness. If you grow up in, I don’t know.. Miami, you just become Rick Ross. You need some darkness in your life to create and shit.
M: Very true. Alright, so I have a couple random quick questions to close it out. First – what’s a better beverage: Gatorade, Arizona Iced Tea, or Fiji Water?
YL: Uhhhh, I’d say Gatorade, man. The purple Gatorade.
M: Yup, that’s the best flavor. Next -- bucket hats. What’s up with all of Sad Boys followers and fans wearing them? Why are people so trendy?
YL: People are simple, you know. They see like, Charlie Chaplin, they see a mustache, they see a hat. They need something to put together with the person. They say Pharrell Williams they think of his stupid ass Gandalf hat. They say Yung Lean they think of the bucket hat. I don’t know, that’s just something we wore. We just had our bucket hats for summer and filmed a couple music videos. There’s nothing more to it than that.
M: What’s the best Lil B mixtape?
YL: Uhh, what’s it called… White Flame. That’s a good one.
M: What kind of rap are you listening to lately?
YL: Like, modern rappers.. I don’t know. I listen to like Chief Keef and Ballout and stuff. Thaiboy Digital’s new mixtape’s intense. Yung LA, he’s dope. Z Money. LA Capone.
M: If you could play one video game – any console, any generation -- for the rest of life, what would it be?
YL: Real life man, that’s the toughest video game.
M: There you go. Well that’s pretty much it man. Thanks again for talking to me.
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