Taking control of his image and how he and the rest of the group are perceived is clearly still part of the masterplan Rocky says Yams left a blueprint, “he left us notes on how he wanted it to be”, for the future of the Mob. I just want to know these things.”Ī$AP Rocky … ‘Why would I run into a bagel shop after a dude threw a pastry at my Uber?’ Photograph: Chris Buck/The Guardian When I ask him what it’s like hanging out with Rod Stewart, who provided vocals on the track Everyday, he says: “It’s like seeing yourself 30 or 40 years older and white.” And when I ask him what he’d talk to David Bowie about if he ever bumped into him (they live a few blocks away from each other), he says: “I just want to know what it’s like to paint his face back in the 70s and shit. That honesty also leads to funny moments. The pair now live together in Manhattan and Fox features on five of the new album’s tracks. Instead, Rocky asked him to sing a song and, after hearing it he asked the man – Joe Fox – to come and record with him in his studio. When he was recording in London, a young homeless man approached him and tried to sell him a CD. That impulsive, devil-may-care approach governs his life, not just his music and his interviews. He’d be like: ‘Don’t shit on them because it’s a waste of energy.’”
Because my main concern was like: ‘Did I lose it, am I crazy, man?’ He kept me sane because he used to humble me even at the height of my career when people would try to reach out and try to do songs or talk shit. To have my best friend there agreeing with me, let me knew I wasn’t crazy. It was always good to have that second opinion because I always knew what I wanted to do. “I’ve been having to do that since he died, man,” he says. It also made Rocky take stock of his life and career. His death came out of the blue and put an immediate stop to the planned Mob album. Before his accidental drug overdose in January, Rodriguez described Mayers as Luke Skywalker to his Yoda, while the New York Times dubbed Yams a “hip-hop spirit guide” for the whole of the A$AP Mob. Rocky pretends not to have heard Bey’s comments, because he’d get “too hype, too happy, too gassed”, but Bey is right – the album feels as if it marks something similar to the Beastie’s shift from hip-hop’s tabloid-friendly enfants terribles to musically mature bellwethers.īut where the Beastie Boys had to adjust to life after the death of Adam “MCA” Yauch in the band’s middle age, Rocky and rest of A$AP Mob have had to come to terms with the death of his creative partner and best friend A$AP Yams (Steven Rodriguez) at the height of their careers. On its release last month the album went straight to No 1 in the US charts, just like Rocky’s debut.
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Live.A$AP, and second album, At.$AP, as equivalent to the one made by the Beastie Boys between License to Ill and Paul’s Boutique. I’m here to stand out, I’m not here to shit on people no more.”įriend and collaborator Yasiin Bey (Mos Def) described the jump between debut album, Long. “Coming in I was so braggodocious: gold, bitches, all that other shit. Rocky knows that some of the preconceptions about him are down to his entrance into the world of rap in 2011, which wasn’t exactly subtle.
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On the other, he says, he’s the humble, studious creative, would-be director and movie star. Is he, as he raps, the Fashion Killa more interested in hanging out with designers Raf Simons and Rick Owens than making music? Or the lothario who, as his lyrics put it, has had too many Fuckin’ Problems? On one level, he might be considered the typically brash young rapper who sports pavé diamonds in his teeth, has a downtown penthouse in New York and a Hollywood pad, and chases Roger Sterling-esque mind expansion via psychedelic drugs. That schedule also goes some way to understanding how the rapper – real name Rakim Mayers – has morphed, in fewer than five years, from the self-proclaimed “pretty motherfucker” from across 110th Street to the cocky figurehead of the A$AP Mob – the Harlem crew that revived New York hip-hop. “I’ve been living like a black rock star,” he says, “I slept for an hour today – an hour and a half? – but I need more.”
How to, in the next six hours, cram in a performance on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show, a shopping spree at Dior Homme and the New York premiere for the film he’s making his acting debut in – Rick Famuyiwa’s coming-of-age comedy, Dope. W hen I meet A$AP Rocky at a restaurant in midtown Manhattan– the kind where veal tomahawk chops go for $50 a pop – he’s trying to figure out the day’s itinerary.
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