Raised in Southern California, eclectic pop/R&B artist boylife strives for extreme honesty. The Korean-American creative, born Ryan Yoo, blends cacophonous sounds (as on “superpretty” and first-ever boylife song “church”) with unwavering introspection. The result is a portrait of manic depressive episodes, perseverance, personal growth, and that unnerving experience of being the child of immigrants in an ungrateful and pressure-filled America.

His debut, gelato, out today, was completed over the last five years as Yoo came to grips with himself and learned how to be comfortable being boylife. From 13, Yoo had experienced symptoms of bipolar disorder, sought help with the unexpected urgency of his parents, and emerged more sure than ever of his path as a creative. With the lowest of lows behind him for the time being, boylife understood his calling and knew he had no time to waste.

“I never did [have a breakthrough moment], it was a bunch of small steps forward and falling forward,” boylife tells Audiomack. “Kids DM me like, ‘How do I make songs?’ I always tell them to not be afraid to fail. I fail all the fucking time. The key is to learn from each failure. Everything I know about myself and music comes from that—it’s all built on the back of failures and what I’ve learned.”

gelato bursts with intrigue. boylife’s voice contorts and subverts expectations given the genres Yoo dabbles in. “superpretty” is the crowning moment of the project, with its explosive transitions. “baddreams” is far gentler in tone, but the writing is painful from the first moments: “I know you don’t want me right now / But could you think about it?” Piano swells and all facades melt away as boylife tearfully sings about being clay in the hands of a former lover.

gelato is thorny and full of violent love and vulnerability. It coaxes the ear and thrills the heart. “It’ll all melt away,” Yoo sings on the opener, “hey.” That may be true, but the afterimage of this album is set to imprint on listeners for years to come.

Let’s start with upbringing. What about your home life and environment pushed you to music?

My dad was always playing interesting music. He was into Dominican music and old jazz vocalists, and Stevie Wonder. That’s what I heard growing up, but no one in my family is particularly musical—but my dad imparted [appreciation] of music at an early age.

How many attempts did it take to land on the boylife sound?

Upwards of 1,000 shitty songs. I have a bunch of awful, awful music. It took hundreds and hundreds of songs until we got to this boylife stuff. I didn’t come into this with a whole vision fully-formed. Everything you hear is the result of trial and error and happy accidents along the way.

How did you not quit after “thousands” of shitty songs?

At the beginning, any creative can recognize this feeling: The first time you make something it’s so fucking exciting. My taste wasn’t fully developed so I was like, “This is tight!” and at the time it was good enough for me to get excited. My friends were like, “Oh, cool, you should do this.” That’s what I needed, to think I could do it. That delusional self-confidence helps you do the thing.

In the PR, you have this great quote: “The goal of boylife is to be very naked.” How did you get to that level of comfortability with yourself?

That’s an intense question… How do you love yourself enough to be okay being yourself in front of other people? It’s a lot of love from my community, close people, my family. That goes a long way. This is morbid, but if you’ve ever been super fucking depressed, when you’re really that low, nothing really matters. The first time I felt that way, I stopped being scared of judgment. That was a nasty cheat code I got along the way.

Just as important as those things is being able to look at yourself and be cool with that. I get along with Inside Ryan. We get along as good as we can.

Is music therapy, or the byproduct of therapy?

It’s an interesting recursive process, between emotional healing and making music. If I’m going through some shit, it’ll take me about two years before it happens to come out in a song. It feels as though I need to process it to some degree, but making the song is also cathartic and helps me reflect in an objective way. Music is therapy, and therapy helps the music. Both are true.

gelato took five years to complete, right? Did you at any point feel like there was no end in sight? How did you deal with that?

I never set out to make an album. I was just making songs exploring different things. The first boylife song I ever made was “church.” I had zero thought about an album. It just didn’t sound like anything else I’d made to that point. It just came out. The next boylife song was “boston,” which is the opposite of “church.” Then, it was “peas.” It was just the sounds of me living; that’s all it was. It was only last year when I was like, I’m gonna wrangle the songs into an album.

I spent months with the songs, really confused. It kind of sounded like a giant, messy pie. It took me and my friend Nick, who produces the music with me, up in the mountains for a month, listening to the songs, and post-rationalizing them into an album. So, it never felt like an endless process per se.

The part that felt endless was making boylife songs, and then deciding to put them out. “church” was over three years old at the time the first boylife song was released, which was “peas.” I was waiting for the right moment.

Is there really such a thing as a “right moment” in music?

Objectively, no. But I follow my intuition very closely. I had to wait until I felt like it was time to start putting out boylife songs. I could’ve put [the songs] out three years ago and it would’ve been just fine, but for me, there was a right moment. I had to listen to that.

As a fellow bipolar person with immigrant parents, I really was enrapt in the subtleties of gelato and how they nod to that experience. Was your goal, in part, to validate people in your various communities?

Ideally, if I’m making music that’s deeply personal and about real shit, there’s going to be people that it speaks to on that same deep level. If I’m doing this enough times, it’s going to paint a very human picture. That’s going to be empowering to other people who were waiting for permission to be that human. The music I make is for myself, but I have this feeling that in doing so, a byproduct of that will be empowering kids that look like me or people that don’t know how to put a certain feeling into words.

Lastly, do you feel free now that you’re done with this chapter of your journey? Or, is it more of an empty “What next?” feeling?

Both at the same time! Making an album was a life goal for me. I had to do this. Really dark, but I didn’t know if I was gonna die in the next week, you know? I had a year in my life where people were taken from me—four in the same year—and that impressed deeply upon me that you don’t really get to choose when you go. Because of that, I felt very urgently about making an album. I’ve finally have done it, and I feel so fucking good about that.

Photos by Aijani Payne.

boylife Isn’t Afraid of Failure