A$AP Rocky is still rolling out his new album Don't Be Dumb, taking advantage of interview opportunities to elaborate on his intent with the long-awaited LP. During a recent conversation on The Joe Budden Podcast, he reflected on his come-up and the sonic landscape at the time, which was starting to embrace "hipster rap" more openly.
Although Rocky sparingly uses this term throughout his remarks caught by joebuddenclips/fanpage on Twitter, he got his point across with this umbrella term. Parks brought up how indie rock was big in New York at the time that the Harlem native was coming up, with Rocky naming Vampire Weekend and Foster The People as big acts that eventually went pop and mainstream.
Then, he said that he misses hipster culture, noting how "things come back around." The A$AP Mob frontman said hip-hop culture is exiting drill rap and gangster rap right now thanks to legal troubles and tragic losses, which he said is "parallel" to the shift from "Five Percenter" rap in the 1980s to more pop-friendly, mainstream gangster rap in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
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Basically, A$AP Rocky's reflection on his come-up is a sign to him that things move in cycles, and that "hipster rap" and its more specific styles like cloud rap and emo rap are poised to overtake drill rap these days once again. "When you think about when I first came out, it was all about hipster music, grunge rap, cloud rap, emo rap, SoundCloud rap, all of that, right?" he expressed. "I think we're seeing the aftermath of balling, of gangster, 'shoot 'em up' s**t. Now, the club ain't what it used to be. I'm off that club s**t. I'd rather take it to the hipster days, go get a brew, sit down, smoke... We listening to music, we listening to albums, we driving. And that's what was my whole prerogative with this."
A$AP Rocky's first official project was LIVE.LOVE.A$AP back in 2011, which came out at around this indie music revival time. The official studio debut LONG.LIVE.A$AP came out about two years later. With Don't Be Dumb 15 years away from his official blow-up, maybe it's time for the cycle to repeat.
