Yung Lean

“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 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'd like to live in a house in Miami and make music, or Brooklyn.”

“I'm like Loki in Nordic mythology: one day I'll be a woman and the next day a snake.”

“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'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?”

“I'm not gonna go to university. I don't want to do anything.”

“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.”

“I'm not really into 'My Little Pony.' I'm not a 'Brony,' just to clear that up.”

“Shanghai was a peculiar city: so many people; everyone seemed to be working all the time. The skyline was beautiful.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I'm still an outsider in the hip hop community. I don't even know if I'm making hip hop anymore.”

“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.”

“Even when I was a kid, I thought of myself as a celebrity.”

“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.”

“I don't like political rappers.”

“I moved out of my parents' house to a place that's more like the projects, because I'm living by myself.”

“When I was in fourth grade, I made a song about the part in Stockholm where we come from.”