The end of the decade’s coming up, and I’m starting to feel the slow creep of time. It’s not that my body is breaking down — though my knees sound like fucking cement mixers when I’m on the elliptical machine now — it’s watching the world grow and change around you, and realising that you must be moving at that exact same pace. It’s when you realise you’re friend’s little brother that you remember crying after falling off a razor scooter is now smoking weed and driving around in a Peugeot 206.
Some artists are a static oasis. Bruce Springsteen is going to be the Bruce Springsteen I’ve known since I was a wee lad. Nas is unlikely to release a folk punk compilation in 2020. Great music, but a bit like a big sonic valium.
A$AP Rocky and Tyler, The Creator don’t fit into that category. Their careers have been defined by constant change and reinvention. As some of the earliest rappers to gain massive traction from internet buzz, they could have easily made 30 mediocre mixtapes with a couple of bangers wedged in there. Instead, they challenged themselves and the culture by constantly pushing forward.
A decade or so into their careers, It can be hard to remember where they started. But going back and listening to Bastard and LiveLoveA$AP now is like going back to early Picasso.
At the release of these mixtapes, Rocky was the proto-fuccboi rocking the streetwear that would go on to inspire a generation of middle class UK dealers, rapping about prescription drug abuse. Tyler was the edgelord 5000, rapping about gang-rape and murder for the 15 year old skateboarder crowd.
This is obviously a very reductive take. Rocky’s blending of new york street-fashion and swagger with a chopped and screwed Houston sound — and his early collaboration with Spaceghostpurrp — influenced a generation of soundcloud rappers. And Tyler wasn’t just a Necro-esque horrorcore shock jock; he blended violent and sexual imagery with brief moments of genuine vulnerability uncharacteristic of hip-hop at the time.
If I’d done that, I’d have just rested on my laurels and developed a crippling substance abuse problem and died before 30. Fortunately, that’s not what happened with either of these artists.
With IGOR, Tyler finally shed the last shreds of his early shtick, releasing an album that refused to engage in cheap attention-grabbing, instead allowing masterful production and introspective lyrics to speak for themselves. It wasn’t necessarily the Tyler I ever expected, but I’m glad it exists. I’m glad he could first do the shocking shit to prove that you could, and then throw it aside to prove that you don’t need it.
And while the antics of the A$AP Mob may seem like they haven’t deviated far from their original mission statement, all you need to do to really see the change is compare Purple Swag, Rocky’s first song to really gain widespread attention, to Babushka Boy. He’s still braggadocious , he’s still talking about clothes and jewelry, he’s still fundamentally A$AP. But there’s an element of playfulness in contrast to the very self-important vibes he gave off early in his career. He knows the pearls and diamonds are excessive, and he’s willing to make himself disfigured and Lynchian in the music video. With songs like LSD it’s clear that he’s done some serious self-reflection, and while he’s not changed his style completely, it feels like now he’s flexing because he finds it fun, rather than needing to put a face on for his contemporaries.
I know a lot of people would probably have written this article about Kendrick Lamar instead. But we all knew Kendrick was going on to great things. Even Section.80 was amazing, and that was his first album that people look at as ‘finding his feet’. In comparison, we all expected Tyler to continue making music for his niche audience of Thrasher subscription holders, and for Rocky to keep making music videos that people would post as GIFs on Tumblr. We didn’t expect them to grow like this, and to me that’s a far more fascinating story.
Change is terrifying. We base our predictions for the future on how things are going right now. When things suddenly shift it can throw off your entire life. But while we’re afraid of change - and rightfully so - we shouldn’t shy away from it. We’re all decaying and mutating and dying constantly. In the face of all that, change that we force upon ourselves can at least give us some illusion of control.
Chris Harman