Review: 'Stardust' sees Yung Lean strip rap back to its nigh guttural

The Swedish rapper's latest mixtape packs a star-studded slew of features who take turns stabbing abroad at the triteness of rap'south current formulaity.

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Susan Behrends Valenzuela

Yung Lean released his latest mixtape on April 8. The outset track,"Bliss," features FKA twigs. (Staff Illustration by Susan Behrends Valenzuela)

Yung Lean's newest mixtape, "Stardust," revives deject rap by embracing its haziest features: its mumbled murkiness, vaporwave production and shape-shifting sonic grammar. Similar a vape's discarded smoke, "Stardust" soars in its strange configuration before fizzling out into nothingness, leaving listeners with the lingering desire to partake in the bygone enchantment again and again.

Kick off with "Bliss," a track that pairs the immature Swedish rapper with FKA twigs, Lean's newest anthology embraces a funky flow from the become-go. The music video that accompanies the mixtape's opening track, one that sees the aforementioned artists immersed in a Lynchian joyride beyond suburbia, is as center-catching as the song is engrossing to the ear. With FKA twigs and Yung Lean re-modulating the song'south tricky chorus of "Bliss on bliss on bliss on"  — ping-ponging it through their contrasted voices; twigs' diaphanous, Lean's gravely — "Bliss" takes on an air of unpredictability that keeps the song lively and foreshadows a mixtape full of exciting rearticulations of the rap genre.

"Trip," the next track on the mixtape strikes back against the blusterous funk of "Bliss." Featuring producers Woesum and Art Dealer, who slap the song with a strong bass, "Trip" sees Yung Lean indulging in the braggadocious lyricism ofttimes associated with pop rap songs. Equally he raps well-nigh a girl that smells "like peppermint" and boasts well-nigh his swagger ("Allow me alter your life / Southside, motorcycles in the summertime, leather jacket life") Lean creates a sonic portal meant to allow listeners to entertain their own ideas well-nigh reveling in hedonism.

This epicurean zeal rings through in tracks similar "Golden" and "Summertime Blood," where Yung Lean raps almost existence an icon and his "all-gold wardrobe." Lean's assumption of the persona of an egocentric rapper is so histrionic it evades otherwise-warranted criticism by transforming his entire musical act into an exercise in elaborate theatrics.

For all his incomprehensible bars and unintelligent brags, at that place's a brain behind Yung Lean. He understands the identity of the gimmicky rapper so well that he is able to cloak himself in their ridiculous traits while simultaneously subverting them, something he accomplishes through such simple feats as melancholically rapping over upbeat productions. This is the case with "Lips," in which he raps nearly lovelorness over a slowed drum n' bass beat. This move recalls the brilliance of Morrissey's penning melodramatic verse to croon atop jaunty rock strumming as part of The Smiths (that is, earlier he outed himself as a correct-fly nationalist). But Yung Lean all-time exemplifies his finesse when it comes to reinventing rap through transgressive attempts at restarting the genre, such every bit bringing in off-kilter features such as Skrillex to assist him in laying the foundational bricks for what's to come up in the world of rap.

Skrillex died to the world when we collectively moved by the non-culture that defined the early 2010s. Merely, armed with likewise much courage, Yung Lean's decision to feature the dubstep pioneer — and strength him to step out of the aforementioned noisy wheelhouse he'southward inhabited since 2010's "Scary Monsters and Dainty Sprites" — demonstrates how once-pronounced dated artists can even so use the expertise that made them famous to re-interpret today's sonic linguistic communication.

In looking to the past, Yung Lean is laying the foundation for the future. Perhaps this makes sense given Yung Lean's geographical distance from the United States, the cultural capital that defined the rhythms of the rap movement he would shortly immerse himself in after leaving his short-lived, admitting first-rate, punk ring.

At the turn of the '10s, SoundCloud sent a million musical notes out into the world, dislodging and revamping strict musical formats. The butterball Swede known equally Yung Lean spit back refractions of rap in gargles of garbled grammar upon existence enveloped in the cloud rap scene that would rapidly flare-up before his rising to fame and the earth's shift to grumble rap. Yung Lean'southward music is more often funny than profound, his accent often making his verses come off as nonsensical. But in seemingly dragging the English linguistic communication to its well-nigh Neanderthal, its most primeval, he seems to exist reframing rap equally the guttural expression of a soul searching for words.

Contact Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer at [email protected]