A$AP Rocky: Testing review - twisted pretty-boy cranks up the weirdness
(The Guardian Culture News)

The rapper´s aversion to the mainstream takes his third album to some glorious heights, with the help of Skepta and Frank Ocean. But is his swaggering decadence wearing thin?A$AP Rocky´s great gift isn´t that he flies above rap trends ­- it´s that he contorts them at will. Who else could be pitched as the successor to New York´s golden-age legends while leaning on subwoofer-rumbling, screwed-up Southern hip-hop? Rocky is an ostentatious impresario who took hollowed-out cloud rap and Odd Future´s lo-fi aesthetic and made it all sound like high-end fashion. A$AP - real name Rakim Mayers - will flow over the kind the dusty boom-bap associated with the legendary rapper he was named after, but also acidic Skrillex beats.He raps cleanly but not uniquely and his lyrics show him to be a man of simple tastes: threads, thuggin´ and admiring his own fine looks. Whatever `swag` meant to early-2010s rap kids, Rocky was dripping in it. The cover of his breakout mixtape, Live.Love.A$AP, featuring the star standing in front of an American flag, has become modern rap iconography - one nation under Rocky´s cool. But this is 2018: cloud rap beats are old hat, and the very meaning of that flag is being bitterly fought over. Can Rocky´s decadent vision of the world also evolve? Continue reading...