The Yung Lean Effect: Reshaping Style and Subcultural Scenes

Yung Lean established the creation of an identity that you could stream.

A vapor wave meme of Yung Lean. Pinterest.

Irony meeting sincerity, rap meeting vulnerability, Yung Lean’s SoundCloud peak and current releases proved and continue to prove that rap has the potential to be pastel, melancholic, and hold significant power to shake global youth culture. The birth of his music, Yung Lean (Jonatan Aron Leandoer Håstad), alongside the birth of Sadboys culture, which included producers Yung Sherman (Axel Tufvesson), and Gud (Carl-Mikael Berlander), cracked open a sense of masculinity that is heavily poured into feelings of nostalgia, emotional softness, and angst related to growing up on a global level. At 16 years of age and known professionally as Yung Lean, can be considered an influential and prominent figure within the early sound cloud rap era. This was not just about creating lo-fi internet rap, but a cultural reset as well, that reshaped how youth dressed, felt, and blurred gender lines through internet sub-cultures.

As a teenager, the Swedish rapper emerged exclusively on SoundCloud around the time of 2013-2014. Throughout the early 2010s, it was highly popular to release music online on the SoundCloud platform, becoming a frontier where anyone had the ability to become a cultural phenomenon overnight. Diving into SoundCloud culture, it was a portal, a digital space for teens and other artists to upload their rough or unreleased tracks. Artists who followed in his path would be Lil Peep, Juice WRLD, and XXXTentacion, taking in the fragility within vulnerability and reshaped desires of music and expectations of male performers. By the early 2010s, it was common to see music distribution through a quick beat upload of a track, and if algorithm gods pushed it further while catching on to the flow, the repost chains aligned, these tracks reaching millions overnight, were strongly considered messy and experimental. These unpolished artists were building their fan bases through thriving on the rawness and shambolic ideas of their music, these were not to be considered flaws – but an aesthetic. SoundCloud was a cultural infrastructure – how artists created identities to perform online. Embodying a sense of post-authenticity, these musicians were curators of moods, visuals, and self-mythology.

There were hundreds of teenagers self-proclaiming themselves as rappers, creating and uploading beats and verses onto this platform, Yung Lean, a teenager from the suburbs of Stockholm posted himself vulnerably online, creating bucket hat, Arizona iced tea culture, rapping over nostalgic and ethereal beats including topics of drugs, sadness, and Pokemon cards. Although his music could push for parody-like characteristics, it showcased a different form of rap. Straying away from the sounds and conventions of American hip-hop, Yung Lean broke into the industry with fragile, ironic, and oddly sincere sounds. His rise did not solely focus on releasing music, there was the creation of an atmosphere, the start of a cultural aesthetic that took the internet – particularly Tumblr – by storm. Creating Tumblr aesthetics of vapor wave visuals alongside his melancholic lyrics, pushed for a detached internet buzz and comedic sort of waves. During his SoundCloud era fame, Yung Lean had embodied and embraced his vulnerability within life and within his music, without abandoning a factor of coolness – providing listeners with the ability to work with their emotions and not fail to lose themselves and their aesthetics, without the abandonment of coolness. The feelings and aesthetics Yung Lean pushed for established itself as another concept of rap – which generally speaking was dominated by hypermasculinity and strong societal male expectations. The introduction of alternative models of male artistry and fluidity within one’s gender expectations, Yung Lean pushed for emotional complexity and recognition. The music and aesthetic Yung Lean aimed for what could be considered a meme, or simply teenage curiosity, his push was the blueprint for the following wave of SoundCloud rappers, including internet born and recognized artists. These creators were embracing fragility within masculine ideals, fashion fluidity, and blurred gender norms within a digital age.

Example of the vapor wave aesthetic. Pinterest.

Having aesthetic world-building in the forefront of his creations, Yung Lean’s association with Sadboys collectively blurred several lines mixing music with subculture, pursuing an emotional identity through visuals alongside auditory factors. The vapor wave aesthetic filters and editing, usage of early-internet graphics, and a DIY sensibility was pushing for irony and sincerity at the same time. The vapor wave and inclusion of more feminine interests at the time altered cultural artifacts, even through a detached lens. These were representations of digital youth culture – one that extensively lived on Tumblr, the feelings and nostalgia Yung Lean rapped about was in coexistence with one another. This can be explained by cultural theorist Dick Hebdige, especially within his book Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979), in which he argued that subcultures often express their resistance through style. The interrelations between clothing, music, slang, were not just fashion or aesthetically appealing choices, but a coupling with semiotic acts, which communicated opposition to dominant cultural norms. This book by Hebdige analyzes specifically British youth subcultures, such as punk culture, which are acts of resistance. Also combining Marxist theory and semiotics, showcase the differences within styles that push or fight against what is considered conventional social norms, which are later commodified into mainstream culture, with recontextualization of them as fashion aesthetics. Tying these ideas in with Yung Lean’s ideals of masculinity and vulnerability, his mass consumer items – vapor wave, Arizona Iced Tea, Pokemon, Hello Kitty, Sailor Moon, etc., removed their commercial associations within the Sadboys aesthetic. This subcultural frame, were representing a new detachment of the generation of the time being raised by concepts created on the internet. These helped to alter identity statements within pop culture. 

Moving away from masculine traits of strength, dominance, and aggression, this creation of Lean’s strived for emotional opacity and gender fluidity. Gravitating towards androgynous styles and alienation created a fractured internet persona. Through the creation of an identity performance, there was the possibility of alternative forms of selfhood for Lean and his listeners. His listeners had the ability to reimagine consumer symbols – which assisted in reconstructing gender performance through the SoundCloud rap game. Judith Butler pushes that gender is not a fixed essence, but a performance through gestures, clothing, and behaviors. This performativity lens and concepts were gathered from Butler’s, Gender Trouble (1990), which translated perfectly in Lean’s music and fashion, which deliberately provided alternativity towards masculinity. Foregrounding himself within monotone deliveries and pastel-heavy music strayed from what a rapper should be. Experimenting with identity was a new performance making segway within masculinity. 

This influence was not confined within European or specifically Swedish culture, the fame sweeping rapidly across various countries, which showcases how cultural change within the music industry can rely on geographic hubs and localized networks, reaching global audiences. Many around the world were given the possibility and had encompassed elements of the Sadboys aesthetic, an emotional community that was not confined to one space, let alone a physical one, establishing a language of belonging. Young people were given opportunity and autonomy to shape their identity performance, challenging local norms around gender, vulnerability through emotional expression, pushing past concepts of toxic masculinity. These aspects of Lean’s aesthetic and messages were frameworks for producing negotiations of gender, emotion, and belonging. Transcending geography and highlighting the deterritorialized nature of internet youth culture, the crafting of localized aesthetics grew to be a global emotional network, one that gathered through gender-conscious, and unconscious identity. 

The offering of a template for young men to perform alternative masculinity, through the perspective of concepts produced by Butler, similar artists like Lil Peep and Juice WRLD diversified and established similar, but their own identities. This new form of vapor wave, Tumbler-esque aesthetics and identities were sharing international cultural scripts, pushing past gender and emotional negotiation. These artists created aesthetics that were pushing synthesized elements within their own music and artist belonging or identities within themselves and their fanbases. Maintaining subversive roots can also reshape mainstream ideas within pop culture, even if they are internet born. However, Lean’s music does not solely exist on SoundCloud anymore, however the aesthetic and push of various gender boundaries remains. He has moved into richer instrumentation, experimental productions, and produces an encompassed polished soundscape. This includes the creation and blend of electronic, trap, and industrial elements, creating the previously named aspects. The feelings within the music remain. His music now released on various popular platforms, foregrounds his lyrics with detachment, emotional confessions, and performative ambiguity. Shaping norms and redefining identity expands possibilities of masculinity and global subcultural landscapes, continuously influencing artists and fans.

There is no underscoring internet culture or the power of performance aesthetics, this was not just the creation of music, Yung Lean established the creation of an identity that you could stream.