At Long Last, ASAP Rocky’s Album Appears

By
Birthplace Magazine
-
ASAP Rocky - At.Long.Last.A$AP album download stream

At. Long. Last. A$AP, the long-awaited follow-up to ASAP Rocky’s debut album Long. Live. A$AP, dropped suddenly over the Memorial Day weekend.

The move led to his label, RCA, to hurriedly place the album, also known by its acronym, A.L.L.A., for sale, a full week ahead of schedule.

The album is ASAP Rocky’s second official release, and features appearances from Kanye West, M.I.A., Yasiin Bey/Mos Def, Future, Schoolboy Q and others.

ASAP Rocky acknowledged the expedited release via Twitter, invoking the name of ASAP Yams, the late visionary behind the ASAP Mob, the loose collective of artists that Rocky heads up.

ASAP Rocky, who leaped onto the national rap stage after his well-received, style-bending, 2011 mixtape, Long. Live. A$AP,  had been making what might be considered typical pre-album noise, in the form of some “controversial” statements and odd behavior. The Harlem rapper and fashion-world darling told the NY Post he engaged in an LSD-induced sexual orgy triple-triple, sexxing three sets of three different women on the same day.

“[iLove]Makonnen gave me acid at SXSW,” he told the Post. “After that, I went back to my mansion and f–ked nine chicks. It was pretty rad. That’s a true story.”

ASAP Rocky has also taken an more abstract angle to his Instagram account, apparewntly flooding followers’ timelines with abstract art and oddly patterned pictures, a move that is reported to have drained him of up to 100,000 followers.

He is also catching flack for calling out singer Rita Ora, spilling the beans of a sexual encounter in a vitriol-laced verse on “Better Things.”

asap-rocky-ferragamo

Controversies aside, it is about the music, and many have long been on the fence when it comes to ASAP Rocky’s presentation. A New Yorker who adopted the smokey, trap-influenced rap sound favored by other regions of the country, had a strong enough debut release to squelch those who would criticize based on regional bias alone, but a solid somphomore effort will help solidify Rocky’s place as a tastemaker in the current rap universe.

As always, we think reviews these days are pretty useless, and because we think you’re capable of making your own judgments instead of arrogantly expecting you to wait to listen to the album to first hear what we have to say about it, we urge you to judge for yourself.

Cop At. Long. Last. A$AP on iTunes, or stream the album via Spotify.