Anyone with half a brain has been fucking with Yung Lean for a while. But when we went to his London show the other week, we were kinda surprised that some of our bros—the kind that know their ACRONYM® from their Shadow Project—were impressed by how fresh the crowd looked. Where you guys been? Whether your thing is playing with people's heads, and what's on the comeback wave, or you're just into repping some of the dopest low-price streetwear from the last 20 years, Lean, the Sad Boys, and the affiliated Gravity Boys have been fronting millennial era sportswear in a way that should convince you it's been lit AF for a minute now.
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Anyone with half a brain has been fucking with Yung Lean for a while. But when we went to his London show the other week, we were kinda surprised that some of our bros—the kind that know their ACRONYM® from their Shadow Project—were impressed by how fresh the crowd looked. Where you guys been? Whether your thing is playing with people's heads, and what's on the comeback wave, or you're just into repping some of the dopest low-price streetwear from the last 20 years, Lean, the Sad Boys, and the affiliated Gravity Boys have been fronting millennial era sportswear in a way that should convince you it's been lit AF for a minute now.
2.Wearing Uggs
Yup, you read that right. For over a year now, Lean has been wearing the footwear you taught yourself to block out on that peng-and-kinda-posh girl you like. The thing is it's not just Lean; 'Ye is feeling Uggs right now too. Need further proof? Style joker Yung Thug was rocking them on The Blanguage last summer as well. Lean even tweeted "Imma cowboy i b wearin Pink uggs punk bitch" late last year in case you doubt his Ugg love.
3.EA7 Jacket
Giorgio Armani's mainlines and Emporio Armani have always had a reputation for high quality materials, solid build, timeless minimalist styling, technical excellence, and just all-round design integrity, exactly the kind of values sportswear fans seek out. So it feels like a major shame that the majority of 'heads overlook the 11 year old Italian EA7 line. Not Yung Lean, tho.
4.Flame Bike Mask (worn as scarf)
Unlike most of his fellow scandies Yung Lean isn't a do-or-die minimalist. In fact despite his—and his crew's—taste for clean, normcore-ish sportswear, he likes to wear a bit of flame print—and there's also a generous helping of old-school tattoo style fonts on the Sad Boys site. As ever, it's impossible to pinpoint exactly if this is an ironic so-bad-it's-good nod, a realisation that however cheesy the past devotees of flame print are, essentially fire is fire, or a homage to the advertising The Source used to carry in the days before 808s and Heartbreak. Sometimes a style's time has come, and slackers should prepare to be confused.
5.The North Face
Is, or maybe more accurately was, The North Face a normcore signifier? Well, is Nike? The thing is sometimes some things—The North Face included—are desirable precisely because of their purposeful functional aptitude for the job, and anything additional to that mission will just seem crass. Look at the Gif above, The North Face looks shower, right?
6.Shallowww
7.Riding a Renault Twizy in Yoshi City
Style-wise, "Yoshi City" is when shit got real for Lean and the Sad Boys. Obviously, a whip isn't an outfit, but it can definitely make the man. And what better way to shout out "I'm too futuristic for all these lames" than riding through your video stood atop a black and white, scissor-doored, composite-bodied, electric-powered, four-wheeled motorbike, wearing Cottweiler trackies and a Y-3 T-shirt, rapping as you hang out the side? The Renault Twizy with its doors up looks like some sort of cyberpunk insect, and we want one.
8.Polo Sport
Probably for its potentially-almost-accessible price tag, and the fact that at one point tonnes must have been sold, this Polo Sport jacket featured in the "Gingseng Strip" video drove the web crazy in a special way. The Polo Sport jacket and matching bucket is the image most distributed and messed with on Tumblr, becoming the iconic Lean meme cementing the Sad Boys as probably the Tumblr rappers par excellence.