On “Jukebox Joints,” he mentions his relationship with Iggy Azalea and throws in a coded reference to Rihanna. On “Better Things,” there are some tactless lyrics about a claimed sexual encounter with the singer Rita Ora. “Sometimes I wish I could get away and charter spaceships/To get away from my inhuman race with hearts of Satans,” he raps on “Pharsyde.” At times, he’s paranoid about losing his edge: “It’s like lately I ain’t myself/I’d rather hang myself before I play myself,” he raps on “M’s.”Īnd sometimes that paranoia spills over into misbehavior.
Occasionally, Rocky slips into storytelling mode, but even here, he emphasizes escape. Generally, he prefers technique to narrative, slipping into double-time patterns or elongating syllables until they become thin and prickly. He is an able student and assimilator without seeming studied. Though he comes from Harlem, Rocky has always been more at home with the cadences and gestures of hip-hop from elsewhere. Rocky is a more precise and impressive rapper here than he was on his 2013 debut album, returning to the nimble and flexible form he displayed on his earlier mixtape and Internet releases. With Rocky, his longtime partner ASAP Yams, and Danger Mouse as the executive producers, it’s unrelentingly hazy, a state of mind as much as a musical approach. “At.” (Polo Grounds/RCA) is a languorous, luxuriously swampy album on which the clouds never part. On his new album, “At.,” ASAP Rocky returns to his early style. It’s fleet and sparkly, and also weighted with better adapted guests (Drake, 2 Chainz, Kendrick Lamar). On those songs, too, he rapped slowly but deliberately, obscuring syllabic tricks underneath a narcotic haze.īut ASAP Rocky’s biggest hit - the profane title shortens to “Problems” - is also his least representative. His earliest breakthroughs, “Purple Swag” and “Peso,” celebrated both directly and indirectly the chopped-and-screwed sound of Houston rap, and its attendant culture around prescription-strength cough syrup.
Rocky has always preferred life in the ooze, and drug music is what got him here. “I look for ways to say, ‘I love you,’/But I ain’t into making love songs/Baby, I’m just rapping to this LSD,” Rocky sing-raps languidly, finding feelings inside the high but losing grip of them just as easily. The one true love song on the new ASAP Rocky album, “At.,” is called “LSD.” A wobbly, slightly morbid affair, “LSD” is about the drug and the love you make - or can’t make - on it.