There was a recording studio in my school, and I knew this kid who had a key, so I'd write lyrics in school while I was in class, and then, in a 10-minute break, I recorded the song 'Hurt' in one go at the school studio.
— Yung Lean
I'm building an anarchistic society from the ground up.
I've always been an outsider everywhere I go - I don't fit in with the Swedish rap community or the American rap community. But who cares?
When I first broke out, everyone was like, 'OK, so is this a joke?' They had to wait until I sold out shows before newspapers started writing about it.
I met Fredo Santana three days before he passed. We were in the studio in Los Angeles, actually, listening to 'Get Rich Or Die Tryin,' and he's a great human being.
I'm like Loki in Nordic mythology: one day I'll be a woman and the next day a snake.
I can retire at a good age and still feel like I've done something.
I moved out of my parents' house to a place that's more like the projects, because I'm living by myself.
Scandinavian rap started in the '90s, off the back of Run DMC, and it was a bunch of Swedish dudes doing the same thing.
When I was in fourth grade, I made a song about the part in Stockholm where we come from.
I love Future. 'Turn on the Lights' is the best song ever. You can cry to it. You can relate to it.
I made my first mixtape when I was 11.
I don't know what I wear. I don't think much about fashion.
Lean just follows his heart wherever it wants to go.
I think a lot of American fans or people that read about us - they think that we're trying to be a part of the American culture, like all these Swedish kids that love America. We rap in English, so I guess there's something, but we're very Swedish, actually.
Shanghai was a peculiar city: so many people; everyone seemed to be working all the time. The skyline was beautiful.
I have to pay a huge price to express myself. You get people asking to take photos all the time; you can't ride the subway... I still ride the subway, but there's always people sneaking photos or coming up to you.
Even when I was a kid, I thought of myself as a celebrity.
America is so much more 'show business.' For instance, you have Barack Obama. We have Fredrik Reinfeldt. Everyone in the world knows Barack Obama!
In the U.S., everything is big - it's like looking through a magnifying glass.
I'm not really into 'My Little Pony.' I'm not a 'Brony,' just to clear that up.
I didn't want to be a one-hit wonder. I really wanted to make albums that had a different aesthetic every album and a different sound.
I'm in my own little world. I don't get invited into galas; I don't meet other people that I don't find interesting. I hang with my friends all the time, and we do exactly what we like.
I'm really like a rat in the rap game. I just drop stuff when I feel like it.
I hate it when people try to explain music. The best thing about music is that it's invisible. If you make a song and someone is like, 'Explain it,' and you explain the message, it's like - poof. It all crashes down.
I don't want to be a rapper that puts out, like, 600 songs a year.
I'd like to live in a house in Miami and make music, or Brooklyn.
I don't like being told what to do.
I was brought up on Black Sabbath, David Bowie, 50 Cent, and Guru. And it all comes out in my own music somewhere.
I think you shouldn't get my music confused with who I am or who we are, because Yung Lean, from the beginning, is like a character created by me. Yung Lean was everything that Jonatan wasn't. And so me, as a person, and my views on things are certainly different than Yung Lean's views, so you should definitely not get those two mixed up.
Yung Lean is like water: he's always changing due to the temperature, how he's feeling.
I don't think I could live anywhere else but Stockholm.
It's kind of beautiful to sit inside a bus and see a city from the windows.
I had a lot of space as a kid. My mother worked with human rights for the government, and my dad had a book publishing company, but they weren't really musical.
I worked flipping cheeseburgers and Big Mac's at McDonald's, purchased a microphone, and cleared all the stuff out of my basement and started making music.
The first idea is always the best.
I think people are scared of progress and change.
Frank Ocean called me when I was in Stockholm when I was, like, 17.
I don't like political rappers.
I've always had jobs with hierarchies - wherever I worked, like McDonald's, or cleaning toilets. It's always been hard.
I get energy from meeting people.
I don't associate myself with anything. I don't associate myself with where I'm from or where I am.
After ten albums, I can reevaluate my life. Maybe then I'll settle down.
I'm not gonna go to university. I don't want to do anything.
I lived with my parents in Belarus, and I went to Russian kindergarten, which is where I learned Russian. Belarus had just become an independent country; there was no food in the supermarkets, so it looked very post-war, very Soviet.
I do love my Gucci slides. I wear them inside. I'm like an old Russian man who wears slides in his house.
I'm not a very macho guy.
I'm really into, like, characters - music characters like Sid Vicious and Kurt Cobain - just, like, how they are and stuff. Like Lil Wayne.
We can be a little less organized in Stockholm; it's not really that serious. And on the White Marble tour in Europe - I don't think there's as much hardcore fans as in the U.S. In the U.S., it's like this whole celebrity culture.
Ever since I was a kid, I had the urge of expressing myself in any way. Like many kids, you want try on different clothes, different looks. I was kinda punky for a while: I had makeup under my eyes. Then I started wearing more baggy stuff.
