I was in a mental hospital. That's all I wanna say. I don't wanna say anything more.
I'm not really into 'My Little Pony.' I'm not a 'Brony,' just to clear that up.
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'm like Loki in Nordic mythology: one day I'll be a woman and the next day a snake.
I do love my Gucci slides. I wear them inside. I'm like an old Russian man who wears slides in his house.
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.
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 was brought up on Black Sabbath, David Bowie, 50 Cent, and Guru. And it all comes out in my own music somewhere.
I love Future. 'Turn on the Lights' is the best song ever. You can cry to it. You can relate to it.
I don't associate myself with anything. I don't associate myself with where I'm from or where I am.
When I first broke out, everyone was like, 'OK, so is this a joke?' They had to wait until I sold out shows before newspapers started writing about it.
Shanghai was a peculiar city: so many people; everyone seemed to be working all the time. The skyline was beautiful.
I worked flipping cheeseburgers and Big Mac's at McDonald's, purchased a microphone, and cleared all the stuff out of my basement and started making music.
I've always had jobs with hierarchies - wherever I worked, like McDonald's, or cleaning toilets. It's always been hard.
In the U.S., everything is big - it's like looking through a magnifying glass.
I'm in my own little world. I don't get invited into galas; I don't meet other people that I don't find interesting. I hang with my friends all the time, and we do exactly what we like.
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 just make videos and stuff. There's not much more to it than that. I'm a musician trying to express myself.
I'm really into, like, characters - music characters like Sid Vicious and Kurt Cobain - just, like, how they are and stuff. Like Lil Wayne.
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.
