Two years after Beyoncé’s self-titled coup, the term “surprise album” has become a misnomer. Drake, Kendrick Lamar and Earl Sweatshirt all dropped records with little to no warning this year, so it wasn’t a shock when ASAP Rocky’s At.Long.Last.ASAP, the solo follow-up to the rapper’s 2013 Billboard 200-topping debut, arrived a week before its scheduled June 2 release date.
But musically, A.L.L.A. is a surprise. Rocky, 26, and his Harlem-based ASAP Mob crew have made an unlikely mix of vintage rap sounds from New York, Houston and the Midwest their signature, but this album is more expansive, with a palette that dips into blues, old Wu-Tang, G-funk, early-’70s R&B, psychedelic folk and more. It’s a confident, but confounding experiment for a formatless, niche-happy, streaming-playlist world.
The album has 16 guest appearances, including Kanye West, Lil Wayne and even Rod Stewart; Rocky, his late Svengali ASAP Yams, Danger Mouse and Juicy J are all listed as executive producers. But the LP incorporates the many sounds and voices in a smoother, more organic way than previous ASAP efforts. There’s no trippy song, no bounce anthem, no cruising slow-roller; instead, it’s Lucy in the sky with diamonds, making her booty clap while sipping on drank and listening to The Doors and Stax-era soul, on almost every track. “Electric Body,” with Schoolboy Q, is rooted in Baltimore club and New Orleans bounce, but they’re disrobed and stretched out — not quite chopped and screwed — into a languid cloud; the result is something inherently new. On “Fine Whine,” M.I.A., Future and new protege Joe Fox join Rocky over tribal drums pounding three different sets of rhythms. Amazingly, it still sounds like one song.
As on Rocky’s first album, his raps breezily chronicle exquisite thuggery and luxury escapism. He’s not saying much, but he says it well. Still, there’s a huge helping of cognitive dissonance when an album so forward musically is so regressive lyrically. Rocky is dismissive of women throughout; on “Better Things,” he claims to have hooked up with Rita Ora in a show of cringe-worthy slut-shaming. And there’s barely a nod to wider, real-life issues. It would be silly to expect deeper commentary from such a decidedly deviant rapper, but it’s still unsettling when, on “Jukebox Joints,” he states, “I be damned if I die sober.” Yams tweeted that same line last October, three months before his death of a drug overdose (it’s unclear if Rocky was quoting him or vice versa). For all of the sonic pleasures, much of A.L.L.A.‘s narrative is hard to swallow. It’s glaring when an album so deep is also so shallow.-KRIS EX