Art via Evan Solano
Ant shall bring disaster to evil factors.
Everything comes naturally to A$AP Rocky. There’s a gravitational pull between his body, the perfect outfit, and a myriad of aesthetic archive pages. When speaking of starting a family with one of the biggest pop stars in American history, he presents it as if it was inevitable, set in the stars to come to fruition the second he got bored of being a bachelor.
Even Don’t Be Dumb, his triumphant return from winning multiple criminal trials and bustling adventures into fatherhood back into the fold of big tent rap music feels serendipitous.
Maybe the last 8 years of leaks and life didn’t really slow him down at all. Amongst a pretty charmed existence, this album, and even this bonus track adventure into Latin dance music with Dominican seductress Tockisha, feels unforced. It’s impossible to imagine Rocky stressing out over anything, but when I see a video like this, it becomes clear how the music video medium is one corner of his life where every detail is meticulously combed over.
With swirling 2D cutouts of computer rendered project buildings, women twerking in a steaming pot of arroz con pollo, and Rocky himself puppeteering a crowd of paparazzi from atop a street sign, we’re transported to a dembow heavyblock party on the muggiest block uptown NYC has to offer.
Dozens of vignettes capture the chaos of such a scene and the flare only Rocky could bring to it. Who else would have a diamond encrusted grenade for a chain? Who else would even think to tap into an aesthetic lost with the floppy disk? The hours it must have taken to comb through footage, find the perfect software to mimic this archaic digital style, and get the frame to frame timing to align with the music outweigh every second he’s ever spent sitting in a hair braider’s chair.
As natural being cool comes to Rocky, the sweat put in by him and the AWGE team to present that cool through is the trait that’ll outlive every other headline.
After a few solid-but-unspectacular records, I thought Roc Marci was entering the twilight years of his career. In response to my ignorance, he wastes no time telling me I’m an idiot; “I ain’t regress, not even half a step.”
Wandering Manhattan rooftops and smoked filled studio rooms, one skipped trim up away from being a James Harden doppleganger, the Hempstead Hero slithers back into his role of rap’s elite tongue twisting shit talker. “The pullman, pullin’ bull, you never been on bullshit / bullpen from pimp stick to pulpit / pulled a thick pitbull bitch out a wolves den.” I don’t know what half of that means, but that’s never really the point with him. It’s about being forced into a quivering ball as he dances around you with a long Cuban cigar, reminding you just how much more important, handsome, cooler, and richer than you he is and always will be. Just when I thought I was out, he pulls me back in!
For 15 years, Broward County’s Robb Bank$ has been the underground Forrest Gump. Name a crew doubling as talent incubator and Robb’s been affiliated with it; RXDVIR KLVN, Members Only, Rich Gang (the label, not the crew, but also kind of the crew?) 300 Entertainment, plus he was one of the few to catch a Father beat when Awful Records was peaking. Now, teaming with the Montreality DVD video crew (aka the best underground rap channel on the web) Robb bops his way around a barren warehouse using his rap hands at record breaking speeds.
He claims “I Like It” to be that classic “pussy, money, weed shit” but, like all his music, it comes from a place of vengeance. Even as his influence pops up in the swag, lyrics, and lore of some of the biggest rappers on Earth, he’s still susceptible to any lies coming out of another pretty woman’s smile. Ah, the treacherous nature of having motion.
I realize this song is nearly 6 months old, but time is fake and with Nephew’s one-two punch of putting up a Hall Of Fame performance on The Truth Hurts podcast and getting banned on DistroKid this week in relation to this record, it feels like as good a time as ever to talk about the ungovernable Rochester rapper.
At the behest of the political comedians from the Chapo Trap House podcast and the sweet call of $500, Nephew crafted this diss track targeting the Pennsylvania senator for an episode that aired back in June. It’s pretty tame as far as Neph made diss tracks go (“n***a you like 6’8 / white man can’t jump to this day”), making the censoring and banning even more odd. Maybe the admins see it as a 3rd strike after 1st Amendment challenging joints “Slap Yo Momma” and “Jazz On Her Face,” maybe every AIPAC pig is on a defamation protection list to make sure only nice things are being said about them; either way, the powers that be are stifling one of this dying nation’s last great artists. If Nephew’s esoteric Henny-fueled rants aren’t safe, none of us are.
Retooling from Injury Reserve after the sudden death of co-founder Steppa J. Groggs in 2020 into a new entity was already a shocker, but every song since has been even more destabilizing. “And I Dance” sounds like remaining members RiTchie With A T and Parker Corey recreating Kanye’s “Hell Of A Life” from memory, somehow distilling a more enchanting wall of sound in the process. Loaded to the edge with distortion and howls, there’s an underlying joy, an acceptance of the unknown that lies on the other side of what may be the last great moment in our life.
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