Racked with tension and twistedly psychedelic, the record sees the 29-year-old take his unusual proclivities to even more outlandish destinations. What’s clear from Testing, his third studio album, is that Rocky won’t totally abandon the universe he has created for himself. Can Rocky’s decadent vision of the world also evolve? But this is 2018: cloud rap beats are old hat, and the very meaning of that flag is being bitterly fought over. The cover of his breakout mixtape, $AP, featuring the star standing in front of an American flag, has become modern rap iconography – one nation under Rocky’s cool. Whatever “swag” meant to early-2010s rap kids, Rocky was dripping in it. He raps cleanly but not uniquely and his lyrics show him to be a man of simple tastes: threads, thuggin’ and admiring his own fine looks. A$AP – real name Rakim Mayers – will flow over the kind the dusty boom-bap associated with the legendary rapper he was named after, but also acidic Skrillex beats. Who else could be pitched as the successor to New York’s golden-age legends while leaning on subwoofer-rumbling, screwed-up Southern hip-hop? Rocky is an ostentatious impresario who took hollowed-out cloud rap and Odd Future’s lo-fi aesthetic and made it all sound like high-end fashion. A $AP Rocky’s great gift isn’t that he flies above rap trends – it’s that he contorts them at will.
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