He’s doing something that plenty of rappers from other regions have long done, and been lionized for. Occasionally he’s punished for not being a traditional New Yorker in terms of lyricism, which is wrong - there’s a heavy Cam’ron influence on this album - and shortsighted. He’s set a fashion bar that more established artists are scrambling to reach - see the vintage Raf Simons sneakers/moon boots he wore on “Late Show With David Letterman” on Tuesday - and he’s almost certainly the first rapper to insult someone by declaring, “You overaccessorize.”įor the most part ASAP Rocky doesn’t overaccessorize. This album features the lamentable “Fashion Killa,” a song that renders dull on record - by playing fashion Mad Libs with a couple dozen designer names - what his outfits and natural charisma render vivid in real life.
But it also features some of ASAP Rocky’s cockiest, sharpest rapping: “Strangers make me nervous/ Who’s that peeking in my window/with a pistol to my curtains?”Īs loud an entrance as ASAP Rocky has made in the hip-hop world, he has made one just as impressive in the fashion world, though the overlap isn’t always seamless. Even the album’s first song, the title track, is dank and foreboding, the opposite of a warm embrace. That’s followed by “Pain,” which sounds like Pharrell Williams being held hostage in an underground bunker with thinning oxygen.
“Hell” - produced by Clams Casino, the ambient-industrial maven who produced some of ASAP Rocky’s most notable early songs - sounds like an orchestra being held hostage in an underground bunker with thinning oxygen. Some of his most powerful songs are the cloudiest. There is New York rap, and also Houston and Cleveland and Miami and Los Angeles. So while some choices on “” (Polo Grounds/RCA), his major-label debut album, feel familiar, it’s more as if they’re reflected in a fun-house mirror. He isn’t an answer to old debates so much as a renunciation of them. And he’s a peacock, doing it with flair and authority. A Harlem native with an expansive ear, he’s become one of hip-hop’s brightest new stars by interpreting the Internet-fueled melding of tastes and influences that’s a given of modern life. Meet ASAP Rocky, stylistic admixture supreme. Or sometimes they sound like everyone they grew up on, and then some. Today’s great rappers don’t sound much like the ones they grew up on. Rap has always made room for innovation, eccentricity and dialect, but the range has never been wider.Īrguments about what makes great rapping fail to grasp the beauty of the argument itself: there are so many options to choose from. But they’re increasingly sharing space with things like texture, emotion, versatility, experimentation and confidence. What are the hallmarks of great rapping in 2013? Lyrical imagination and complexity, sure - those are always on the list.