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A$AP Rocky was a disrupter when he emerged with his debut mixtape in 2011. The Harlem-raised rapper had a flashy uptown mien, but he looked outside his home city for musical inspiration. New York chauvinists bristled at his heretical borrowings from southern rap and the sedative-dosed online scene known as cloud rap. But Rocky had the last laugh. His success heralded the onset of a more stylistically fluid era in mainstream US rap.
Don’t Be Dumb is his first album in eight years, a long delay: the disrupter, now 37, has been disrupted. One reason is his status as half of a superstar celebrity couple with Rihanna, with whom he has three children. The responsibilities of parenthood are compounded by the distractions of fame. What to wear to the Met Gala? (Rocky co-chaired last year’s celeb-fest.) Which brand to partner with? (He moonlights as creative director for Ray-Ban and Puma.)
He has also faced legal issues, including an assault trial in the US at which he was acquitted last February. And there have been acting parts in films such as Spike Lee’s Kurosawa remake Highest 2 Lowest. Rocky hasn’t been idle, but the gap between albums places an unhelpful weight of expectation on Don’t Be Dumb.
Its 17 tracks are a madcap sprawl of different styles. “Stole Ya Flow” is a superbly belligerent diss track directed at a supposedly copycat rival. “Stay Here 4 Life” is boring romantic R&B. Damon Albarn croons glumly in “Whiskey (Release Me)” while Rocky raps roguishly about sex and fellow rapper Westside Gunn makes random gunshot vocalisations. “Robbery” is pure screwball fun, a jazzily swinging duet with Doechii in which the two rappers play lovers carrying out a heist.
Although Rocky is a vivacious leading man at the microphone, he can’t salvage the album’s uneven quality. Flighty movements between different beats and genres hit differently than when he was a tyro. The eclecticism comes across as thinly conceived and poorly sequenced, the product of an A-lister able to do what he wants but uncertain as to why. Perhaps he should have taken even longer over his comeback.
★★☆☆☆
‘Don’t Be Dumb’ is released by A$AP Worldwide/RCA Records
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