NME Radar: A$AP Rocky
November 22nd, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Published in the Nov. 19 issue of NME Magazine.
Follow Rocky via liveloveasap.com.
It’s exactly a week since self-dubbed “pretty motherfucker” A$AP Rocky released his 16-track mixtape ‘LiveLoveA$AP’, when he strides into the Polo Grounds Music offices a couple of blocks from Madison Square Garden. “How’s it going B,” 23-year old Rocky greets label boss and hip hop kingpin Bryan Leach, fixes himself a Hennessey and Pepsi from Leach’s personal bar, and drapes himself over a leather armchair, laptop open and Facebook on before he hits the seat.
The last week has been a good one for Rocky, the Harlem-born rapper whose real name is Rakim Meyers after the Rakim. “People have to finally come out with if they like me or not now,” he says of the tape. “There’s no wondering if I’m good or not. And I’ve been getting a lot of good feedback.”
Good feedback is an understatement. It’s not even a year since A$AP Rocky and A$AP Ferg dropped a handmade video for a track they made called ‘Get High’ on YouTube. At the time Rocky had moved his mother and baby sister from Harlem to New Jersey and was paying for their apartment by selling drugs on the street.
“It was a way of surviving: I didn’t have a job, my mum didn’t have a job,” he says of his time pushing dope, which finally came to an end in July, around the same time he put a new video, ‘Purple Swag’, online.
It took a third video – for woozy Houston rap number ‘Peso’ – in August, and suddenly everyone wanted a piece of A$AP Rocky. Including Polo Grounds Music, part of Sony/RCA, who put a $3 million deal on the table to sign him and fund a group label called A$AP Worldwide, with Rocky in charge.
“I’m a tastemaker, I know how to look out for what’s good, what’s big, what’s next,” he says, pulling out a bag of weed and calling up YouTube videos of Tennessee ‘gangster walk’ and Lana Del Rey.
If there’s pressure on him to deliver, Rocky’s not feeling it yet. “This is easy!” he says lighting up with a grin. “Selling drugs is hard. But this? All you gotta do is show up and do what you love.”
