A$AP ROCKY interview
INTERVIEW Thom Bettridge
PHOTOGRAPHY Goldie Williams Vericain
STYLING Matthew Henson
HAIR Tashana Miles
MAKEUP Shideh Kafei
A$AP Rocky was born in Harlem, not far from a place once known as Seneca Village, before it was razed to the ground in the 1850s to make way for Central Park—a project that displaced wealthy, property-owning African-American families, unfairly compensating them with a fraction of their land’s value. Now based in Beverly Hills with partner Rihanna, the rapper and dad of two sits down to reflect on the changing nature of hustles, Black people’s enduring influence on fashion and how today’s creative directors compare to MVPs from the NBA. As an interdisciplinary artist himself, Rocky’s imagination and versatility feel almost unlimited. Unicorn is an overused term, but in his case it seems to fit uniquely well. Zero other humans in the world can rap like him, dress like him and look like him all at the same time. He rose to prominence alongside a new era of renaissance men—creative forces like Virgil Abloh, Tyler the Creator and Pharrell Williams—who had an early grip on a new type of gesamtkunstwerk that spans music, fashion and art via the twin mainframes of pop culture and social media. Within this cadre, Rocky is the good-looking laid back one. But his easy demeanor belies a serious body of work. His videos for Babushka Boy and Tailor Swif are arguably the best rap videos of the past five years. The runway debut of his brand AWGE cannonballed into men’s fashion week with great fanfare. And he’s pulled both off while serving as the male embodiment of Bottega Veneta as well as the doting first-husband of pop. It’s a juggling of responsibilities that Rocky must be used to by now, patently demonstrated in this conversation with The Travel Almanac, as he multitasks his way through post-shoot grooming rituals while rolling a blunt on a Goyard laptop case.
How are you doing?
I’ve never been better. Let’s get a bucket. [directs assistant] Get her a bucket so she can soak for me.
Are you getting a pedicure?
I’m getting all that. I’m a well-groomed young lad.
You know, I actually have two boys around the same age as yours.
Get the fuck outta here. My little guy just turned two and my other little guy just turned one. They are exactly 14 months apart. Irish twins.
Incredible.
That’s not a derogatory term, right? Irish twins?
I’ll Google it and let you know. The thing about kids and traveling is that you’re always checking a lot of bags.
Absolutely, man. It’s crazy— Imma do my mustache, sorry. Look, I’m multitasking.
All good.
When we travel, it’s the worst.
How many bags are we talking?
You don’t want to know. You going to think I’m lying. [assistant laughs] He’s laughing because he’s been part of moving them before.
Ballpark figure.
Double-digits. All duffles. And that’s just the clothes.
Is that how you rolled into Paris for Fashion Week?
We just went to Milan.
For the Bottega show?
That shit was lit. Did you see those little seats and sofas? Hold on. I need you to hurry up, kiddo. [assistant finishes dumping weed into a blunt] There you go. Thank you.
Are you getting one of those Bottega bean bags for your place?
Hell yes.
I like how good you are at multitasking. You’re getting your face done, you’re doing an interview, getting a pedicure, and we’re here twisting it up.
Welcome to my life. Where else you going to get your makeup done with a hoodie on?
Is this hoodie from Puma as well?
No, no, no. Only the shoes.
I was a big fan of your runway show. Are you working on the encore right now?
Yes, sir.
Do you have any info you could drop about it?
The inspiration behind it, I just want to say, we going to keep it true to my essence this time. The concept came with help from my friends, and they gave me ill ideas. I don’t want to say too, too much, but the essence is going to be Harlem, of course.
Were you surprised at the reception of the first one?
Low-key, I wasn’t. Because everybody was saying, “When is this dude going to finally do his own label, because I know he’ll kill it.” I wasn't shocked. I was really thankful for the love and support. A lot of people liked it, and people in the fashion industry too. For those who hated it, they voiced it. I love that. I don’t want any bystanders or spectators.
I remember when you were talking about that show, you mentioned ghetto expressionism as a concept. Is there a big, main concept you’re focusing on right now for the new stuff as well?
Yes, absolutely. I think that ghetto expressionism
is a genre that I’m definitely advocating for and pushing for. It’s an aesthetic that I’m going hard for. I think that ghetto expressionism is in my DNA at this point, so don’t be surprised at anything I do moving forward.
I feel like with the brand, nothing’s ever expected. You’ll wear something and then it shows up online. The show is a surprise for a lot of people, do you try to keep it irregular, or create a sense of mystery?
Around my shows?
Around the brand, because I feel like it’s like not like a normal brand, where there’s a ton of marketing trying to get it out there.
It’s not necessary. I think the mystique is what sells. There’s still like a lot of questions about the organization that people don’t know the answers to. I think that’s enticing within itself. . .[offers the blunt] I see you looking at this.
I’m good. That’s in my “Interviewing Rappers 101,” never hit the blunt. . .Driving over here, I was thinking about being in college when your first big songs came out.
You’re making me feel old.
I just look old. But I feel like at that time, fashion-wise, you were on some shit that no one was really into yet. You were six years ahead of other rappers being into brands like Rick Owens or Givenchy. Do you think like now that a lot of other people are onto that, you feel like you’re past some of it now?
I think it’s beautiful that my culture is so into fashion. Because maybe it was a generational thing. To take it to a street perspective, it changes like hustles change. In the ’60s and ’70s, it was about pimping. The drug of choice back then was heroin. Then by the ’70s and ’80s, that's when cocaine came into play. It was about crack; pimping died. Then the ’90s came, and it was less about being a hustler or being a pimp, more about being a gangster and a drug dealer. That’s what you wanted to do. Not to give so much negative stigma. I’m just trying to tell you how hustles change. I think for us as a culture, we needed a few pioneers to set a couple things in place for us to be initiated into the fashion industry. Because the fashion industry wasn't too receptive to heterosexuality, or even Black people for that matter, let’s be honest. Now, everything is so open-minded due to the state of society. Black people have been influencing high-end fashion brands since the ’80s. Think about Dapper Dan and all that stuff. That’s how we got introduced to it—from there. The rappers were the guys who were into fashion. Now that I’ve come around, I have a different type of connection to it. I’m into fashion more than the average person is.
But here’s the thing. When I was in high school, I didn’t know John Galliano was the creative director of Dior.
Really? We knew that like knowing that LeBron James got traded to the Heat. Just like now everybody’s talking about Alessandro being at Valentino.
But I don’t think most kids did. I feel like if you ask a kid in high school in New York today, who’s the creative director of Dior, they’d be like, “You mean Kim or Maria Grazia? Did you hear the Jonathan Anderson rumors?” I think being a creative director is the new “I want to be an astronaut when I grow up,” for kids of all backgrounds.
I’m so glad that I could be a catalyst for that shit. I’m glad that I could advocate for just fashion in its entirety.
You’re an image-maker also. How do you find the talent that directs your videos?
So, nine times out of 10, it’s me who writes every video and stuff like that. That means that I can’t be a subject in front and behind the camera. You usually got to get a co-director and that co-director is a known name at the time, or someone on the come-up that can really use that co-sign. What ends up happening is most people assume that that person directed it. When in all reality, I wrote it.
So you come up with a lot of it.
Not a lot of it. I write the entirety of these projects front to back. There’s no way I can make music and somebody could just come in and be able to emulate it and make something compatible to what I’m doing. Being a director and a creative in my position is almost like being a chef and being a customer.
I was watching the Tailor Swif video today—
Your first time watching it was today?
No, I was rewatching it. But you can really watch that video so many times because it’s so dense—there’s like 17 references every second.
It was all memes. I basically took memes from my favorite websites, got together with my guys, and we wrote that shit in Bulgaria. I was shooting a commercial over there, and that was the one common place we could meet without having to Zoom or some shit.
I talk to a lot of fashion designers and something we always come back to is this idea that designers need to be image-makers, and that needs to be core to the design. With some of the best rap videos—like anything with Hype Williams—you see rappers expanding their music into that type of 360 vision.
Yes. Busta. Missy Elliott. Ludacris had some amazing animated videos. I think that the sport of that as a trade is dying. For a lot of kids, it’s about quick sound bites and 12-second clips. I’m not opposed to it—those things are fulfilling to me too—but I’m still an old school cat.
You have a busy life. Where do you go to slow things down?
I walk around the city. I know that sounds crazy. It’s very chaotic, but yo, I find Manhattan got so much shit to offer. So many jazz clubs: Smalls, The Roxy Hotel, The Walker Hotel. I go to jazz clubs all the time.
As someone who grew up in the city, I understand how weirdly relaxing it can be.
Where?
Upper East Side.
Which part?
Park Avenue.
And what?
81st.
Fire. Go 20 more blocks, you’re in Harlem.
Right where Central Park ends.
You know Central Park used to be Harlem? It wasn’t named Harlem, but Central Park was the only town that Black people were allowed to civilize at the time. What ended up happening was that the Black people got too wealthy, so they had to be kicked out.
I was walking my kid around the park the other day, and I found a plaque about it.
See, at least you know I’m not lying to you, bro.
What advice would you give to the future generation of aspiring creative directors?
To anybody who has tried, attempted, and failed at this point, they failed solely due to the fact that somebody else failed them or gave them a failing grade. I would say—as cliche as this sounds—fuck them. Keep doing it and use that rejection, that embarrassment and that failure as fuel to action. Kill shit. That’s it.
