3/5 of my clothing items are from h&m right now, and i'm clutching a venti salted caramel mocha, gazing into the unresponsive cover of haruki murakami's 1q84. this was my preparation for my one-man listening session of yung lean's new album unknown memory, which promised a refinement and expansion of the sluggishly bouncing world of lean's previous work. the cover's aesthetic properties convey a warmness, as if the smoke-filled atmosphere of lean's is decidedly fresh off the lips of whoever blew it. and the title? surprisingly prescient
The album is bookended with instrumentals, and the first is the most telling. the synths that have come to characterize the swede's beats now possess a subtle, but tellingly obvious amount of trap infusion to them. though the album comes soon after he played his first show in the united states, one can clearly tell that he and his team looked towards the metamorphosing tastes of his american fanbase to craft beats that say yeezus as much as von. lyrically, the autotune-addled vocals of much of the album speaks to a desire to create an image, not an album only. he titles a song "leanworld", and the swampy vortex of unknown memory s**s us into such a world, with no desire to ever escape
Policy recommendations: much like drake eschewing "club paradise" and "dreams money can buy" for placements on take care, yung lean's career-defining song "kyoto" is absent from the album. "kyoto" is a song that, like "club paradise", wouldn't feel out of place no matter the aging of it. instead, unknown memory works almost as a continuation of that which "kyoto" started, but sadly falters to ever reach its peak
Overall rating: 8.5/10