Polaroids Of Androids

ASAP Rocky
LiveLoveA$AP

Coming off the back of his weirdly intriguing Deep Purple EP, ASAP Rocky has built up a mountain-load of hype from only a handful of songs, but he still remains relatively untested. The Harlem rapper then added some serious financial muscle behind him and his ASAP crew — 3 million bones worth of card-counting, back-patting, major-label suits, to be exact. And the hype only intensified. Now with the release of his first mixtape LiveLongA$AP, Rocky flips all his cards face up on the table.

The dominate rap blueprint has always been something along the lines of: create a persona, rep your city and if you sell/sold drugs; it's a bonus. And Rocky takes all this — except he doesn't sell drugs anymore (it's corny), and jams it deep into your eardrums. His refrain: "I be that pretty motherfucker / Harlem's what I'm repping," is omnipresent on every song, but with his swagged-out cool he manages to get away with it. His persona is above all, an interesting one, on Leaf he drawls: "hipster by heart, but I can tell you how the streets feel." And this is pretty much what his point-of-view boils down to. He's sold drugs in Harlem, but he was wearing Raf Simons when he did it. And it is believable. All the gold grills, purp drank, and weed smoke are part of his life, and he showcases the shit out of it — using it to draw you into his world.

On LiveloveA$AP Rocky plays to his strengths, he's doesn't have the lyrical prowess of a Kendrick Lamar, or the vocal dexterity of a Drake. But he's got a smooth, agile flow. He knows when to draw out syllables to lift a verse and can switch up to a passable double time flow when needed. But the real driving force behind the mixtape is the slew of underground-ish producers. Burn One, Beautiful Lou, A$AP Ty Beats and SpaceGhost Purrp all add Houston-influenced, ambient, acid-tipping beats that give the mixtape a coherence that breeds solid re-playability. However, it is a white dude from New Jersey who goes by the ridiculous/awesome name of Clams Casino that is Rocky's ace-in-the-hole. Clams has been constructing smoked-out, hypnotic soundscapes for the likes of Lil B and Soulja Boi, but when Rocky brings him into the fold, the chemistry is mad-scientist. Backed by Clams' trademark haunting strings and muted drums, Rocky sounds his most comfortable, weaving his smooth flow comfortably in and out of the beats, never forcing.

While the mixtape does have an appealing consistency — both in content and sound — it can drag in places. You hear his trademark "pretty motherfucker" in every song, and his content runs the same paths of getting high, getting shroomed, getting dranked, getting paid and getting bitches. When he puts a fresh spin on it, like on the triumphant Palace: "Write it on my tombstone: I was stoned nigga," it works. But the tape suffers at the hands of a few too many dumb, lazy lines, like on Roll One Up: "Puff puff pass take a drag just don't steam it tho / Smokin on that captain kush this shit is unbelievable."

If there are any clouds hanging over Rocky's head, the predominant one is that he's all style, no substance. But that's missing the point. The actual rapping isn't the focus here; it's the experience, the ride. It's all a journey into his world and the destination doesn't really matter. Rocky doesn't rap from the top of forty-foot stages, he's rapping on your level, albeit from some twisted parallel universe, and he reaches out and invites you in. A world where everything is purple; the clouds are purple weed smoke, and purple drank spills freely from the taps, and the girls' golden hair match their gold grills, and Rocky is your stoner-prince. "I'm a down-to-earth nigga, we can kick it," he drones on the end of Leaf, "take a hit with me."

Words by James Southey