Welcome to Week 2 of our Book (Album) Club! This weeks album is LIVE.LOVE.A$AP by A$AP Rocky. Please give the album a fresh listen and give us your thoughts, opinions and possibly hot takes.
Doesn’t matter if this is your 100th time listening to the album or you listen to the album the first time right before posting!
Upcoming Calendar
October 3rd: Poverty’s Paradise by Naughty By Nature
October 10th: Invasion of Privacy by Cardi B
October 17th: R.A.P. Music by Killer Mike
October 24th: AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted by Ice Cube
Check out the Weekly Album Club thread over at !alternativenation@lemmy.world if you have some free time and want to check out something different. No proper affiliation, I just think it is neat that they are doing this too!
This is my first time experiencing this album and maybe the first time hearing ASAP Rocky. So my first impression is that it’s great production with okay rapping.
I see the appeal of ASAP Rocky’s bravado and confidence but it doesn’t really do anything for me. It’s good in small doses but not as a whole album.
I love the production. Question for the hiphopheads. Is this considered Chopped and Screwed? with the slowed down beats and slowed down vocal parts? It just makes for a really cool vibe.
I especially love the Clams Casino beats. A couple of my favorite tracks were Bass and Sandman which honestly sound similar on the back end but I knew I liked Clams Casino before going into this so I wasnt surprised to like a few of those tracks.
I also like Trilla. I think maybe because it wasn’t all Rocky and has a couple other ASAPs rapping on it. It was a nice change of pace from a rapping standpoint.
This for sure describes Rocky very well and I assume that is intentional. Or at least that he is aware of it. The A$AP collective was formed as a group of rappers, producers and fashion designers. Most notably A$AP Barry and A$AP K never did anything on the musical side as far as I can tell (though Barry is no longer affiliated with the Mob as he is a sexual predator piece of shit). I think Rocky goes more for the vibe and energy, knowing he isn’t going to go down in history as a legendary MC.
I’d personally consider it Chopped & Screwed influenced. Specifically the slowed down vocals and such you are talking about are for sure influenced by the Houston sound, and songs like Bass lean pretty heavily in to it. But songs like Palace and Trilla are for sure too fast to be considered Chopped and Screwed on their own. There actually is a Chopped and Screwed Remix of the album that was posted on the A$AP Mob website back in the day that might give you an idea of what it might sound like if it leaned fully in to that.
Glad you enjoyed the album on the whole, even if Rocky’s actual rapping wasn’t 100% doing it for you!