The different narratives surrounding Yung Lean often gravitates towards a similar synopsis; the one about an free spirited minor and his weirdo friends who armed with little more than contextless cultural influences, a limitless reference framework, idiosyncratic visual content and an unsupervised highschool computer lab - seemingly overnight - became one of the most seminal artists of the past decade; genuinely polarizing, towing a frantic fanbase and countless copycats along as he crashed and burned through now-infamous world tours, erupting streaming figures and omnipresent influence over anything and everything from bizarre art projects to mainstream music alike. Whilst not being untrue, the above is of course a simplified rendering of an accelerated and exploratory coming-of-age story, open for interpretation through the impressive stream of multimedial output stemming from that moment when his first upload “Ginseng Strip 2002” exploded onto the internet in March 2013.
From there tracing forward through his studio albums mixtapes and countless one-off singles, the broader story beyond Miami meltdowns and Arizona ice tea promotions materialises; one about inexhaustible creativity, an abstract yet highly complex account about metamorphosis of the self, an old soul from juvenile age turned weathered and peculiar artist in a reality of his own making, eccentric and always scrutinised like a born entertainer hybrid between Arthur Russel and Lil Wayne.