What ever happened to the middlebrow rap blockbuster? When A$AP Rocky released his official debut album 10 years ago this Sunday, that pretty motherfucker was part of a constellation of crossover stars making grandly colorful statement LPs that churned out hits, tantalized critics, and suggested the “blog era” could be adapted to cinematic scale. Every album is a time capsule, but listening back to LONG.LIVE.A$AP, I’m especially struck by how rarely albums like this emerge in the present.
The early 2010s were a huge moment for self-consciously artful epics like My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Take Care, and good kid, m.A.A.d. city. With rare exceptions like Tyler, The Creator, that lane is closed now, partially because the men at the center of those albums have moved on: Kanye West to oblivion, Drake to the assembly line, Kendrick Lamar somewhere farther from the zeitgeist than ever. Back then, they were all present in Rocky’s music — Club Paradise tourmates Drake and Kendrick literally as guest MCs, Kanye spiritually through the influence of his omnivorous genre-melding taste and his fascinations with art, fashion, and the attendant halls of power. There were also traces of Three 6 Mafia’s Southern horrorcore and DJ Screw’s molasses-paced rider music and Bone Thugs’ elastic sing-song — everything but the New York hip-hop you’d expect from a guy from Dipset’s neighborhood whose parents named him after Rakim.
In 2013, it all came together on a record that affirmed Rocky as both a rapper and a potential pop star. He looked the part: extraordinary swag and a mouth full of gold, flanked by his entourage amidst a cloud of purple smoke. He sounded it, too, with slippery, nimble delivery, evocative descriptions of his own splendor, and an unmistakable presence adaptable enough to thrive in any environment. Rocky had a reputation for style over substance, for neatly assembling his influences into a mood board and calling it art. But if it lacked a certain depth, LONG.LIVE.A$AP fit pretty well into that continuum of big-swing brand-name hip-hop records and was gobbled up by the same people (e.g. me) who were going nuts for Kanye, Drake, and Kendrick. The record still stands as a vast and ambitious collection of sounds, one that massaged major-label rap’s time-tested something-for-everyone approach enough to make it feel less like pandering than savvy curation.
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