January 15, 2013 • Polo Grounds Music
I haven't listened to it much since, but A$AP Rocky's debut mixtape from 2011 LiveLoveA$AP turned out to be a really cool release, especially with me being pretty new to the whole cloud rap thing. On the other hand, Long.Live.A$AP, the followup and commercial debut, doesn't have the same fresh spark its predecessor does. The album goes back and forth between a handful of really great tracks and a handful of completely uninteresting ones, sometimes leaning a bit more towards straight-up party rap, and leaves a bit to be desired.
It has its moments, though, and there's truly a lot of great moments on the album. Opener "Long Live A$AP" has a really cool contrast between the heavy trap verses and a light, airy bridge; the transition between the two is anything but subtle and it sounds great. "Goldie" has a fantastic minimalist-yet-heavy beat. "Fuckin' Problems", as the single, is predictably good with a great guest spot from Kendrick Lamar—one in a great list of guest spots, like ScHoolboy Q's great verse on "PMW (All I Really Need)". Even the Skrillex appearance on "Wild for the Night" is fitting and (almost) tasteful. My highlight might be the production on "Phoenix", which might seem like typical cloud stuff at this point but I really like how it works on this album.
But at the same time there are a couple cuts I just didn't care much about, even the Clams Casino-produced "LVL" and "Hell", which pale in comparison to his earlier tracks, especially the repulsive hook on "Hell" (and that extreme bass across the whole album is giving me a massive headache). Many of the tracks sound simply like generic modern rap, which goes against all of what made A$AP Rocky interesting in the first place, as he doesn't do it quite as well as I bet he could. I suppose the fact that the producers on this album are so comparably diverse is what hurts the album the most; it makes the album feel really disjointed as opposed to the solid cloud production of LiveLoveA$AP. Rocky's rapping is not terribly great either—he's definitely not bad, technically he's decent (let's not get into the awful lyrics though), but there's nothing distinct about it that makes it nice to listen to and the guest spots almost all outshine him.
It's hard to quantify what I think about Long.Live.A$AP or not—I feel as though I like it and I don't like it at the same time. It's definitely a step down from the mixtape, unfortunately, as the song quality is just too inconsistent. I don't think the tend towards more mainstream rap works that well for A$AP Rocky. But at the same time there's plenty of cool ideas here; it just sucks that you have to dig through some crap to get them out.
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