10 of Yung Lean’s best collabs

Yung Lean “Bliss” stillDecember  1,  2025MusicLists10 of Yung Lean’s best collabs

As his sibling-like relationship with Charli xcx takes centre-stage for Dazed’s Winter 2025 issue, we look back at the Swedish cloud rapper’s most iconic musical collaborations

ShareLink copied ✔️December  1,  2025MusicListsTextSolomon Pace-McCarrickRead MoreLife & CultureAre we caught in a culture of never-ending catch-ups?FashionFashion designer Valériane Venance wants you to see the beauty in painLife & CultureWhat can extinct, 40,000-year-old Neanderthals teach us about being human?Yung Lean – The Winter Issue 2025Gallery / 19 images

In many ways, Yung Lean is music’s ultimate outsider. Born and raised in Stockholm, Sweden, he gleaned hip-hop culture from a distance, studying the likes of Nas, 50 Cent and local act The Latin Kings before launching his own ethereal, English-as-a-second-language rap career on SoundCloud in the early 2010s. He’s since gone on to inspire countless misfits from the peripheries to pursue music. Still, perhaps Yung Lean’s most impressive achievement is how his unorthodox artistry has infiltrated the mainstream, working with some of the 21st century’s biggest names. 

Interviewing him for our Winter 2025 cover story, Charli xcx observed an “effervescent” quality in Yung Lean that draws people to him, later writing in her Substack that he was “one of the wisest people I know”. This is written all over Yung Lean’s raw yet emotionally profound releases, and also partly explains why he has been sought out to collaborate with some of music’s biggest names over the last ten years. 

Below, in honour of Lean appearing on our Winter 2025 issue cover, we look back at ten of his most iconic collaborations. 

“INFERNO” – YUNG LEAN, BLADEE 

Spoilers: This is one of our favourite tracks of 2025. Lean and Bladee are an iconic pairing with dozens of collaborations under their belts, but what makes this one stand out in particular is their joint foray into the emerging rage-rap sound currently taking the US and UK by storm – a scene which they partly inspired with their cloud rap releases over ten years earlier. The track also contains a nod to the winding road their career has taken since then, with Lean’s opening verse including a vocal sample taken from the 2020 documentary Yung Lean: In My Head, in which label exec and father of Lean’s late close friend Steven Machat declares: “These are not good boys”. 

“PARASAIL” – TRAVIS SCOTT FEAT. YUNG LEAN AND DAVE CHAPPELLE 

Lean feat. Dave Chappelle?!? Sonically, “Parasail” perfectly fits into Lean’s universe, with tranqued-out, languishing chord progression colliding with Travis’ simultaneously high-energy yet sombre rap verses. The duo actually have quite an extensive history together, with Travis Scott being the only feature on Lean’s debut 2014 album Unknown Memory, but this track takes the cake simply for the wild lineup. Hearing Chappelle read the lines “I forgive myself, I choose to feel good, I choose to feel free” on “Parasail” – lines which literally could feel at home on a Bladee x Lean collaboration – is just the cherry on top. 

“360” – CHARLI XCX FEAT. ROBYN AND YUNG LEAN 

Speaking of Lean and Charli, we had to include their only public collaboration on here (previously listed as one of our favourite Brat remixes). Released before even the original Brat album, the “360” remix arrived out of nowhere yet made total sense. As Robyn says on the track herself, Charli, Lean and Robyn were all child stars in their own right, and there’s clearly a chemistry between the trio as they trade dynamic lines about living that high-flying celebrity lifestyle. 

“CEREMONY” – SKRILLEX FEAT. YUNG LEAN AND BLADEE 

Continuing Lean’s legendary voyage into the musical mainstream is this unexpected garage banger with none other than Skrillex. While Bladee and Lean might thrive in rap’s raw and experimental nether regions, it’s quite wonderful seeing what happens when they sit down with a pop songwriter like Skrillex. Lean’s “d-d-d-d-dancing” refrain, for example, is upmarket-coffee-shop-playlist levels of catchy.

“GODSPEED” – FRANK OCEAN

In four short years, Yung Lean went from a distant outsider to featuring on perhaps the biggest album of the 21st century: Frank Ocean’s Blonde (and that’s all before he even turned 21). While Lean is not credited in the track’s title (only in the liner notes), and his contribution is limited to backing vocals throughout the track, this appearance nonetheless shows just how bright Lean’s star shone. Elsewhere, despite no credits confirming it, rumours persist that Lean also provided vocals on Blonde’s “Self Control” – but we’ll leave that up to the listeners to speculate on. 

“BUILDINGS” – YUNG LEAN, THAIBOY DIGITAL, BLADEE

This is a deep cut from Lean’s early SoundCloud era, but it still stands the test of time. Despite preceding the formation of Drain Gang itself – here, the group are still known as GTB (or ‘Gravity Boys’) – “Buildings” perfectly captures their subsequent appeal. There’s Tokyo Hands, Whitearmor and Yung Sherman’s frostbitten production that evolves with each new verse, there’s Lean and Thaiboy’s layered yet drowned out vocals, and, of course, there’s Bladee shouting out the union between his Gravity Boys and Lean’s Sad Boys clique on the anthemic chorus.

“NO MERCY” – YUNG BANS FEAT. YUNG LEAN

This Lean verse is massively slept on – he just sounds so good over Yung Bans’ distinctly melancholic trap sound. Given that Lean shouts out “Free Bans like he on my team,” the track was presumably recorded while Bans was serving time for a first-degree burglary charge between 2015 and 2017. 

“BLISS” – YUNG LEAN FEAT. FKA TWIGS

The lead single from Lean’s 2022 album Stardust sees superstar FKA twigs step into Lean’s sonic world, contributing her signature ethereal vocals over a distorted post-punk beat. Coming complete with an Aidan Zamiri-directed music video, the only question left is: which A-list musicians has Lean not worked with? 

“YAYO” – YUNG LEAN FEAT. PLAYBOI CARTI 

In a previous interview, Lean shared that Carti flew him and producer Whitearmor to Atlanta for a studio session in 2017, and that they’d made a load of music together, but this leak seems like the only one that reached the light of day. Still, featuring Carti’s signature pitched-up vocals and even spitting a Mario Kart bar – something which seems to be a recurring theme in Lean’s music more widely – it’s one for the ages. 

“OVERTIME” – BABYFACE RAY FEAT. YUNG LEAN

From cloud rap to post-punk to Frank Ocean-style R&B and now a Detroit rap linkup with hometown legend Babyface Ray, nothing is off the cards for Lean at this point. Despite Lean and Ray hailing from very different backgrounds, the pair find unexpected common ground on the track, with Lean’s devil-may-care attitude on the opening verse setting the stage for Ray’s bars about living the “thug life” and ransacking department stores around Detroit. 

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