Music Review: Long.Live.A$AP
After a series of delays that could be punfortunately attributed to his name, A$AP Rocky’s debut album finally dropped two weeks ago.
Entitled “Long.Live.A$AP,” the album was well worth the wait. Even with a few questionable tracks, the project is, overall, very good.
Leading off with a thunder crack on the title track, Rocky has producers Jim Jonsin and Rico Love set the mood that most fans of his mix tape “Live.Love.A$AP” are familiar with, and one that he himself is very comfortable in. It is a mood not unlike that surrounding Area 51, at once sinister, alien, and even lonely.
Accompanied by distorted air horns and dissonant harping, Rocky does what he does best, which is to give sex, drugs, money, and violence his patchwork, yet fitting flow to ride on through the druggy, desolate soundscape.
These dreamy, or perhaps nightmarish, moods and sounds persist throughout the first half of the record – through the already great single “Goldie,” and on both Clams Casino produced tracks “LVL” and “Hell.”
The latter track, which features singer Santigold, is another high moment, as her singing is like the murmur to Rocky’s flow, both running along Casino’s spacey beat.
Another standout track from the first half of the album is “PMW (All I Really Need),” featuring rapper Schoolboy Q. The hook, especially, is a crude mantra toasting sex, money, and drugs, but the song sounds good nevertheless, as the rappers complement each other well in rhyme delivery – Rocky, sometimes almost narcoleptic, and Schoolboy, mostly very enthusiastic and aggressive. Add in producer T-Minus for his beat, and chalk this one up to “Does it bang? Yes.”
While everything until and including “Pain” hews closely to the path of success made by the laidback, sinister aesthetic of the mix tape, on track seven of his album, Rocky takes his first musical misstep. Nobody can blame him for trying to enter the mainstream, and the song is not altogether horrible, but it does feel out of place and unfortunate.
Titled “F***ing Problems,” the track features Drake, who feels the most natural on this track, 2 Chainz, who has his even own fans begging for mercy from his laughably atrocious hook, and Kendrick Lamar, who is okay and has his own funny line.
As if appealing to the hip pop mainstream was not enough, Rocky also reached out to American dubstep producer Skrillex for “Wild for the Night,” a track that is not only off of Rocky’s beaten path, but also most of hip hop’s. Whether the combination of screeching, modulated electro sounds and A$AP Rocky was a successful one is left to the judgment of the listener.
It is interesting that the feature appearances on “Long.Live.A$AP” form a somewhat sharp bell curve, and it is on “1 Train” that the curve peaks, and by a large margin.
Featuring rappers Kendrick Lamar, Joey Bada$$, Yelawolf, Danny Brown, and Big K.R.I.T., this track was probably the concoction of some A&R who wanted to appeal to every conceivable hip hop listener and yet thought it too difficult to spread the rappers out across the album.
Fortunately, everyone manages to sound good over the repetitive chorus of violin trills, especially Danny Brown and Big K.R.I.T.
A$AP Rocky ends the regular version of the album with “Phoenix” and “Suddenly.” It seems that the best tracks on his music hold the rights to single word names, and these two are no exception.
“Phoenix,” produced by Danger Mouse, has Rocky waxing triumphant, with lines like, “Painting vivid pictures, call me Basquiat Picasso / Capo Head Hancho, now my following’s colossal,” while “Suddenly,” on the other hand, has him waning, turning introspective about his life, and growing up over a muted sample, until the beat breaks down and he shines.
Space might be the natural musical ecosystem for Rocky if his lyrics weren’t so grounded and worldly in its recurrent materialism. Not much can be said of Rocky’s lyrics – they not only revolve around a few general themes (sex, wealth, violence), but upon a few specific ones, as well (the gold on his teeth, designer clothing).
He is aware of this – “Don’t view me as no conscious cat, this ain’t no conscious rap,” he says on “Suddenly.”
And while he would be right in saying that it’s not “conscious rap” in the hip hop sense of the phrase, as in “deep” or “social,” he is certainly conscious of his surroundings and his newfound wealth.
Considering this, and the fact that the album cover is of him wrapped in the American flag, perhaps “Long.Live.A$AP” is, consciously or unconsciously, a message of something deeper.