Review Summary: Sad boys season I'm in space for a reason
It's really hard to review a Yung Lean album. Though I initially took the guy as a joke (and a bad one at that), he's proved to be such an interesting and versatile performer that it's quite to hard to hate the guy regardless of how much everyone seems to worship him. But regardless of the hype, Unknown Death 2002 was one of the best albums of 2013, and the fact that it was free was the icing on the cake. And now we have Unknown Memory, the long awaited follow up to that record. It's immediately obvious from how studio-produced this sounds that the things that everyone has been saying about Lean from the beginning; 'he's not serious!', 'he's memey!' and 'his video game references are so awesome!' are not things that need apply here. A song like Blinded is a good example, rocking a beat VERY similar to that of terrible lead single Yoshi City (probably in competition with Kyoto as the worst Lean song), and a tuneless, atonal hook to accompany Lean's familiarly vacant flow. The keyboards towards the end of the song are a nice touch, but the atmosphere captured here just isn't the same as on Unknown Death.
And that's strange because this is the same production team (Yung Gud, Yung Sherman and White Armor) that created most of this album's predecessor. The songs certainly flow together well, but their similarity prevents any of them standing out, bar the painfully bad Leanworld, with its horribly un-autotuned singing. But even when Lean employs the same vocal effects (now pitch-perfect thanks to a glossy production job) as before, it sounds so hollow and emotionless (not to mention lyrical and chorus recycling as on Ice Cold Smoke) that it makes you yearn for the messy hooks of Nightvision and Gatorade. At this point, it's easy to lose hope that there's any good songs on Unknown Memory, but then Ghosttown enters the fray. Travis Scott is the record's only guest vocalist (the lack of any Gravity Boys cameos is disappointing) and does a good job of spicing up the monotone rapping (the first time I wouldn't use that as a compliment for Lean's previously very charismatic music). The hook is catchy, but in a stupidly self aware that Lean KNOWS will be quoted endlessly in the comments section of this review but really have zero thought put into them. He clearly has no problem with hammering the same inane hooks into the listeners head, knowing they'll be the only thing left to remember when the dust settles at the very welcome end of this record.
The rest of the songs don't even rely on this yawn-inducing technique. Sandman gets swamped in effects and is left floundering for its life against a torrent of synths and keyboards juxtaposed with awfully bland lyrics (not even funny any more, just really boring and eye-roll-inducing) delivered in Leandoer's lazy, inebriated style. The pointless interludes, the comatose hooks and the narcissistic lyrics bring every catchy chorus down to basically nothing more than a desperate appeal to be taken seriously, and without a wide array of producers there's only so much the usual team can dish out. It's certainly comparable to Bladee's EP from this year because both represent artists enjoyable in small doses taking up too much time on their own release, and rendering themselves null and void as a musical entity. It's easy to complain about the lo-fi elements of his previous work being absent here, but less easy to explain why exactly this release ended up so mediocre considering the time and money invested in it.
