THELIONCITYBOY on loving the “yaya papaya” girl

You know that feeling of being oddly attracted to that “yaya papaya” girl? The one who lives “east side on the green line” and tells you you’re late when you’re on time? 
Of course you do. And rapper Kevin Lester, or The Lion City Boy, does, too — those are lyrics from his new single, Yaya. 
Featuring the soulful vocals of Benjamin Kheng, the song was inspired by none other than Lester’s wife, singer-songwriter Aarika Lee. “She’s a bit loud; she has this big character. Sometimes, when you meet people like that, the first meeting doesn’t go so well. Like, ‘Why did she make fun of me?’ But there’s just something that still attracts you to that person. Maybe because she’s just so yaya — that’s why I like her,” the 32-year-old explained, chuckling. 
“That is my type. I like the outgoing girls who have a bigger voice. To me, that is sexy — when a girl knows herself and is very open that way.” 
The song, which is released today, is part of his upcoming first full-length album. Titled Paradise, it will be released in August and features collaborations with artistes including Gentle Bones, Charlie Lim, FlightSch and Aarika Lee — yes, the “yaya” girl in question.  
Like Yaya, the other eight songs on the album are also about “the other side of paradise”, he said — the quotidian side of Singapore that usually doesn’t get celebrated in music. 
“I thought, ‘Why don’t people talk about the other ways that people fall in love? The other types of love?’” Lester said. One song on the album, for instance, is about late nights at Orchard Towers. “Why can’t I make a love song out of that, instead of waiting for the typical love song that’s like, ‘We met in a corner of a cafe’? I feel like someone can tell stories of Singapore (that are not) the normal tourist things, the postcard things, the Sentosas.
“When I started to write that first song about Orchard Towers, I realised that all our paradises are different,” he continued. For instance, “I’m eating bak chor mee, and after that I’m going to make my music in the studio, and put out this music — and that is enough to be my paradise”.
For that reason, this album tells “the most honest story of the city that I love, in the language that I know best”, Lester said. 
As The Lion City Boy, he has always tried to represent Singapore honestly, and in this album, his voice has become more developed, he thinks. Being half-Indian and half-Eurasian, he is the polyglot voice “that grew up in St Gabriel’s Secondary School, in Serangoon, with the street lingos”. He is the rapper who raps about nightlife, yet works hard to raise his daughter and son, aged three and one.  
“To write as an English artist, a lot of the time, it is (navigating) this difficult space where you’ll be compared against Western music. It’s natural,” he said. “As I kept writing and writing, I became more confident of writing in that Singaporean way I know how to.” 
Apart from the Singlish vocabulary, topics that might be seen as taboo are his favourite. “I’m not the kind of rapper who addresses things to bring them down. I just address them because that’s life,” he said. “That is our life right now. And if nobody wants to do it, I’m excited to 
do it.” 
Just as how we might judge someone for being “yaya papaya” and still be attracted to them because of that very quality; paradise, like life, is what we make of it — and the idea of paradise is perhaps much larger than we think it is. 

Yaya is currently available on all digital platforms including iTunes, Spotify, Deezer and KKBOX. The music video will be launched on YouTube on July 20. 
Paradise will be released in August.