Jonatan Håstad more commonly known as Yung Lean is a 25-year-old artist who has influenced a large section of modern rap and hip-hop. He only has 1.3 million monthly streams on Spotify and has only reached the billboard top 100 charts once (in 2014), which may account for why he has still not gotten the recognition he deserves from the mainstream. While he may not be a household name, he has influenced artists such as Lil-Uzi, Travis Scott, Juice WRLD, SoFaygo, and Yeat who have and are currently changing hip-hop as a whole.

While taking much of his influence from artists like Kanye West, Frank Ocean, Young Thug, and Lil Wayne, Håstad grew up in Sweden. This forced him to create his own style of music being separated from any rap traditions that have been built up in America. This allowed Lean to be extremely unique and allowed him to curate what he thought  “Swedish rap culture” should look like.

Yung Lean’s music has mashed together multiple elements of separate genres that eventually created the genre “vaporwave” and further popularized cloud rap. In most of Lean’s songs, the lyrics were not as “audible” following suit with the “mumble rap” style. With less of a focus on the lyrics and more on the beat and sample, Lean’s music became extremely unique and completely stylized the rap scene in Sweden. Due to the way his music sounded and the topics he touched on, Lean’s music was not going to be played on the radio, and from the get-go, it limited his reach. Subsequently, he created a cult-like following, in short, you either loved or hated Håstad’s approach to music. 

The vapor-wave genre and Yung Lean were always seen as a joke. Lean himself recognized this in almost all of his interviews and throughout social media. He made jokes with his lyrics and with the music videos he made, often referencing common internet-era trends or jokes. During the early years of his music career, Håstad did not by any means see it as a career and only saw it as a hobby or even just as a joke. While Yung Lean may have started out as a joke rapper he has recently grown out of this era of his music career and is starting to be seen as a more “serious” artist. Even prior to the maturity of his music Lean was still well respected in the scene for the influence he had over other artists and the scene as a whole. But as of recently, he was able to elevate his music as a whole. Listeners can clearly see this in the song “Agony” where Håstad acknowledges some critics’ opinions, by saying “Can’t write a song only do hooks” repeating these lyrics. He related this concern to the motif of the overall song, which touches on his own anxiety and depression. This is a large step for Lean, along with this song his last two albums showed his progression as an artist and is a testament to both Leans creativity and growth. 

Håstad completely changed how hip-hop and music as a whole are viewed and how artists come to fame. Lean was able to make the “cloud rap” scene into a far more respected genre of music and made it far more respectable for artists to become recognized off of Soundcloud. Håstad saw his fashion in the same ironic light, and at the time was labeled as different and “strange”. But, in parallel to his music is now seen as a pioneer for today’s modern fashion, influencing current trends and fashion styles. In the end, Lean’s music and overall presence in the 21st-century have changed the way hip-hop sounds and how artists rise to fame, and how artists act.