A$AP Rocky is ready for another crazy musical party Never afraid to mesh genres and styles, he’s back on an Austin stage.
Harlem rapper A$AP Rocky was famous enough to record the sophomore album his way: In May he dispensed a combative, 18-song memo to the genre that he’s not interested in reverse-engineering radio singles. Five of the tracks featured a London guitarist he met on the street. And when music is an endless streaming buffet, who wants to unpack 18 dang songs like this is the ‘90s and the same two CDs never left your Cavalier?
“I felt it was necessary to put that much material in it,” Rocky says. “You gotta pace your crowd.”
He refers to the fact that it had been two-plus years since his chart-topping major-label debut. Rocky felt the urgency to crowd the box with summer reading, and then let hip-hop marinate on the project all summer.
Rocky’s voice is relaxed, deep — his demeanor pensive but arrestingly polite. He’ll apologize for interrupting, which here is not necessary but still a kind thought. Between questions he’ll stew on radio silence for a few seconds to assess. On this day he has a runny nose, and I can tell that he’s been working at an intense pace. He admits that a lot of his younger fans struggled to latch onto singles like “L.$.D.” that featured falsetto crooning from Rocky, and an acid-trip music video.
“They didn’t know what to expect, they thought I was going to put out an R&B album,” Rocky says. “You give them a wild video like ‘L.$.D.,’ you gotta let them catch up to that.”
The resulting At. Long. Last. ASAP is very much a rap album, however; it features gigantic cameos from headliners like Lil Wayne and Kanye West, verbal commitments from hot-right-now contemporaries like Future and Schoolboy Q, and even a classically trained blessing from the perennially conscious Mos Def. It’s also one that harkens back to the 26-yearold rapper’s childhood of bold auteurs like Missy Elliott and Busta Rhymes who threw kitchen sinks into releases, yes, but did so with intensely theatrical videos.
“For the most part my message or my point, my morality — anything I do, everything I do — I manifest it into my art. So my videos conceptually match my album. Even the artwork. Even the titles of the song.”
He thinks about this sort of top-to-bottom media a great deal. He laments that others don’t consider these platforms and try harder.
“I don’t see too many other rappers that kind of spark my interest when it comes to videography or cinematography,” Rocky says. “These guys are not directing videos themselves. They’re not coming up with these concepts. They’re not writing these treatments. Their labels are hiring people. ... We come up with these crazy ideas and hope we can afford to accomplish them. That’s what we do every day and that’s what gets me out of bed.”
Part of that perpetual hustle, unfortunately, stems from the loss in January of his longtime friend and creative partner Steven “A$AP Yams” Rodriguez. Rodriguez died of an accidental drug overdose in January, and since Rocky has been on a professional tear.
“I definitely work harder just to accomplish what he wanted and what I wanted. I have to, man,” Rocky says. “His dream was just as adamant as mine. He was so adamant. He was precise, man. He knew what he wanted.”
Rocky has an unspoken connection to Texas, which should help fuel his imminent series of engagements in the Lone Star State. He grew up with a keen interest in legendary Third Coast artists from Houston like Lil Keke and Slim Thug. And the late D J Screw’s signature, slow-pitched, prescription-strength cough syrup-tinged tapes shape Rocky’s sonic palette.
“I think the music and the feel, the culture, it’s just melodic and it was so druggy and slowed down that it took me,” Rocky says. “If you notice that’s just how I prefer to make music.”
Rocky has the heart of a curious stoner, but with the work ethic of the drone who really buys into his tech startup’s end game. He fits right in with Austin, in other words. And while he’s excited to crank out big hooks at Austin City Limits, he’s pretty over South By Southwest, calling the music conference “aspiring people getting hammered.”
After hitting SXSW in March, Rocky noted how this year in particular “the mentality of it was people just who don’t (care) about music coming out to party.” Back in 2012, a SXSW party Rocky headlined — that also featured the alpha punk of firestarters Trash Talk — ended in a brawl. Lamentable as it was, Rocky says he learned a lot from the experience. He credits the bill as being ahead of its time for its mashup of cultures, and the sights and sounds clearly influence how Rocky approaches the evolution of his trade.
“The aesthetic was to bring two worlds together ... and (have a crazy party),” he says. “And that’s how it’s supposed to be.”
‘For the most part my message or my point, my morality — anything I do, everything Ido—I manifest it into my art.’
A$AP Rocky