The Very Adult Life of Yung Lean

The next move, it seems, is a more deliberate approach to adulthood. He’s been sober for more than a year, for instance, and has developed a robust roster of hobbies: boxing, drawing, ceramics. “I do like this health stuff, now that I’m sober,” Lean admits. “I’d probably think this was the lamest thing ever when I was 16.”

“I don’t want to sound cocky or jinx myself,” he adds. “Because in a way this is a new chapter of the game, and it just started.”

As he peruses the menu Lean says, a bit sheepishly, “I want to get a steak. Simple man.”

And so he orders steak frites—hold the frites—with a side of sautéed mushrooms and a starter of pesto-slicked burrata. To drink, a pot of black tea, which he dispenses from a foot above his teacup in what he tells me is “a Moroccan pour.” As flies buzz around our table, he doesn’t shoo them away once. Instead, he holds his hands out still (tattooed across his knuckles are Gothic letters that spell out his paternal surname, “Leandoer”) and allows them to land as if they were butterflies.

“You’re very stoic,” I tell him, “with the flies.”

“I am very stoic,” he agrees, and I can tell he means it in general.

Right now, he’s also travel-weary. He was just in Sicily to celebrate the marriage of pop star Charli XCX, a longtime friend, to the 1975 drummer George Daniel. A good chunk of the guest list was hot, young, and niche famous; photo dumps from the nuptials may have taken over your Instagram feed.

“I can never go to another wedding after this,” cracks Lean, who howled a rendition of the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog” onstage during the raucous after-party while Daniel’s bandmate Matty Healy crowd-surfed. “Me and Charli, we’re really the same, in a lot of ways,” he adds. “She really is like my sister, always has been.”