A$AP Rocky has touted his beatmaking on the album, and has coaxed a coherent and fascinating sound from a wide group of producers (including Danger Mouse, Mark Ronson, and Kanye West). The opener “Holy Ghost” very clearly disses hypocritical clergy members, but Rocky recently told Complex that he “didn’t want this to get confused bashing religion.” Maybe the culture’s moving on from molly and its day-glo aesthetic.Īs strange as it is to say about a rap album, though, the words here are mostly beside the point. He makes a few nods toward inner-city crime, police, and the death of his friend and producer A$AP Yams, but it’s not like he’s out to make big statements. Worse, his stock sexual boasting comes with a sickening mean streak: One verse in which he insultingly talks about a hookup with singer Rita Ora will go down as one of the ugliest pop-culture moments of the year. His verses are often monotonous, his voice lacks the distinctive character of many of the emcees who appear alongside him, and his lyrical concerns are for the most part as generic as people who hate all rap assume most of the genre’s lyrics to be.
Though it will burnish his status as an innovator, the album won’t dispel Rocky’s reputation as an underachieving vocalist. Also in the mix: church bells, piano interludes, Rod Stewart as interpreted by Miguel, and a super-impressive guest verse from Lil Wayne. Black soul appears too, both in samples and in new performances from singers like James Fauntleroy. His own particular skills probably matter less than the fact he’s there at all like Kanye West bringing Bon Iver along to warble over baroque hip hop for My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Yeezus, the idea is to inject a bit of earnest campfire soul. Interwoven throughout the album are Van Morrison-like bits of guitar and vocals from Fox, an amateur musician who Rocky says he found at 4 a.m. The next track is called, descriptively, “L$D,” and it’s a mostly percussion-free singalong whose accompanying music video gives a good sense for Rocky’s greatest talents-imagery, coherence, vibes. cut in, and the drums start to pick up, hitting a congo-like gallop as another emcee, Future, unleashes his trademark warble-rap. For the first two minutes, it’s all comedown vibes, with a “slow, slow, slow” refrain from singer Joe Fox acting like the tempo notation in an Italian concerto. But the difference this time out is that the song structures themselves have been liquefied, and the results are often thrilling. This isn’t totally new: In his short but influential career-which includes making the 2012 top-10 hit “Fuckin’ Problems”-A$AP Rocky’s choice of production styles has gotten him lumped in with the “cloud rap” subgenre, whose name is pretty self-explanatory. Sure enough, the first description that comes to mind when listening to At.$AP is “druggy.” The songs collage tempos, styles, and echo-caked sounds, with backing vocals pitchshifted very low and melodies that coalesce from murk. The ‘Dating Market’ Is Getting Worse Ashley Fetters and Kaitlyn Tiffany
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