Yung Lean’s “Storm II” Reaches the Hot 100 After VMA Performance Sparks a Streaming Surge

Yung Lean has claimed his first appearance on the Hot 100 as a lead artist with “Storm II,” his collaboration with GENER8ION. The track opens at No. 93 on the October 17 chart, turning a song released in April into a newly visible U.S. chart success after its presentation at the MTV Video Music Awards.

The entry is a first for both sides of the collaboration in slightly different ways. For Lean, it is his first lead-artist placement on the singles chart. GENER8ION, the French project uniting producer Surkin and filmmaker Romain Gavras, is also making its first Hot 100 appearance.

That distinction matters because Lean had appeared on the chart before, but not in the same capacity. He was previously credited alongside Dave Chappelle on Travis Scott’s 2023 song “Parasail,” which reached No. 53. “Storm II” puts his name at the center of a charting release—and does so through a project whose music, casting, filmmaking and dance were developed in close conversation with one another.

A months-old song finds its moment

“Storm II” arrived in April through Iconoclast Music. Its path to the Hot 100 was not framed around an immediate chart debut, but around a sharp resurgence in listening after the VMAs brought the performance and its accompanying visual world before a substantially wider audience.

During October 2–8, the song registered 3.1 million chart-eligible streams, a 30% increase over the previous week. The bigger change began earlier: the first tracking week that included the September 27 performance produced a 369% jump, with streams rising from 508,000 to 2.4 million.

Chart-eligible streams are the plays that count under the chart’s methodology, rather than simply every possible interaction a song may receive online. The supplied figures show why a televised performance can still change a track’s commercial trajectory in a streaming-first environment. Visibility is not automatically a chart position; viewers have to seek out and play the song afterward. In this case, the post-performance lift was large enough to carry an April release onto the Hot 100 weeks later.

The song is also moving strongly within its genre lane. In its fourth week on the Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart, “Storm II” rises to No. 2. That result helps clarify the record’s placement: its Hot 100 debut is a broad-audience breakthrough, while its dance/electronic showing reflects the musical territory in which the GENER8ION project is specifically operating.

GENER8ION’s audio and visual sides are inseparable

GENER8ION is not presented as a conventional producer-and-vocalist pairing. Surkin and Gavras are respectively a producer and filmmaker, and their work on “Storm II” was developed with the song and its film in parallel. Lean joined a concept that needed more than a vocal performance; he was also central to the narrative role on screen.

Related coverage includes Yung Lean’s “Storm II” Earns His First Lead Hot 100 Entry.

The video casts him as a school bully. Its early scenes portray his abuse of other students before a class photograph transitions into a group dance. The shift is deliberately jarring: a story initially built around intimidation turns toward a stylized mass performance by boys in school uniforms.

That structure makes the visual more than an accessory to the song. It is part of the way the record was designed to be experienced. The musical and cinematic components were shaped together while the track was still taking form, with recording taking place in Paris and Sweden before the team completed the music on the Belgian video set.

Gavras had already worked with Lean by casting him in the film Sacrifice. That existing creative connection made Lean a natural fit for the central role in “Storm II,” where the performance rests on an intentionally uneasy character concept as well as the song itself.

Why the dance is central to the story

The group routine was created by choreographer Damien Jalet and required extended preparation. The aim was not to make the participants immediately read as a troupe of formally trained dancers. Instead, the casting and choreography were constructed to preserve an element of surprise when the larger group begins moving as one.

Jalet auditioned performers and developed the dance first with smaller groups, then expanded it for the bigger cast. That process is significant because large-scale choreography can easily become visual background if it has no narrative purpose. Here, it is the turning point: the class-photo setup gives way to synchronized movement, reframing the scene from a single character’s cruelty into something collective, strange and highly controlled.

There is a useful practical lesson in the song’s rise for artists and teams thinking about music-video campaigns. A visual can create a lasting identity for a release, but a high-profile performance can provide the later spark that turns that identity into renewed listening. Neither element replaces the other. The film gave “Storm II” a striking premise and memorable imagery; the VMA exposure helped place it in front of people who could then respond directly through streams.

That does not mean every performance-led spike becomes a durable chart story. The available numbers establish a powerful increase across the weeks surrounding the appearance, not a prediction about where the record will go next. Still, the Hot 100 debut at No. 93 and the No. 2 Dance/Electronic Songs position demonstrate that the surge has already produced measurable results across two different chart contexts.

What this chart entry represents for Yung Lean

For Yung Lean, the milestone is notable precisely because it arrives via a collaborative work that does not flatten the identities of its contributors. “Storm II” remains a GENER8ION record featuring an artist whose presence is essential musically and visually. Yet the Hot 100 credit recognizes Lean as a lead artist for the first time.

It is also a reminder that a chart breakthrough does not have to follow a release-week script. The track was available for months before the late-September performance unlocked a much larger wave of U.S. streaming. Its rise was tied to presentation, movement and narrative as much as to a conventional promotional cycle.

For readers following the wider overlap between music and screen culture, this is a useful example of a performance built as a complete piece rather than a song separated from its visual language. The results are now visible in the numbers: 3.1 million chart-eligible streams in the October 2–8 window, a No. 93 Hot 100 entrance, and a No. 2 position on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs in the track’s fourth week there.

It also arrives during a busy period for artists using distinctive creative worlds to frame works in progress; Doechii’s evolving Swamp Sessions offer another recent example of how an artist’s broader presentation can become part of the conversation around new music. In Lean and GENER8ION’s case, the immediate milestone is clear: a project conceived across studio, set and choreography has now made it onto one of the U.S. singles chart’s most visible stages.