A$AP Rocky is hard at work on his next album and he’s setting the expectations sky high heading into Don’t Be Dumb.
As the face of the Gucci Guilty fragrance, DAZED caught up with A$AP Rocky on Monday (October 2) and he also dished on his upcoming experimental album, which he believes is his best work to date.
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“I’ve been really experimenting as usual and what I like about this is it feels like my best work yet,” he said of the TESTING follow-up.
“I want to leave expectations wide and open. I don’t want to tell you what to expect. I just want people to experience it how they do naturally.”
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It remains to be seen when Don’t Be Dumb will ultimately arrive as the album remains without a release date heading into quarter four of 2023.
Rocky’s last single landed in July with “Riot (Rowdy Pipe’n).” He previously debuted some unreleased songs — including the Miguel and Thundercat-assisted “Same Problems” — during a performance as part of 2 Chainz’s Amazon Music Live concert series last December.
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He also debuted a handful of other songs from Don’t De Dumb at Rolling Loud Miami in July — one of which seemingly contained a shot at Travis Scott.
Perched above the crowd on a set of metal stairs with several iced-out hair clips in his braids, Pretty Flacko took aim at an unnamed rival while performing a song called “Taylor Swift,” which hears him brag about stealing their “bitch” as payback for biting his style.
“First you stole my flow, so I stole your bitch/ Then you stole my style, I need at least like 10 percent/ All due disrespect, I hope you take offense,” he spits.
A$AP Rocky and Rihanna’s family grew to four with the birth of baby Riot Rose in August. The A-list couple showed off the first photos of Riot along with older bro RZA in an adorable family photo shoot last month.
Meanwhile, Black Thought recently gave Rocky and the A$AP Mob their props for ushering in a new wave of NYC Hip Hop.
“This album ushered in a new era of New York hip-hop,” he said of A$AP’s 2013 debut project. “It’s so braggadocious, it’s so macho, it’s so Harlem. But it’s also genre-transcendent.
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“He was able to blur the line between the New York hip-hop aesthetic—which was trending less at the time—and the aesthetic that was beginning to trend more: classic UGK, 8Ball and MJG. He was the bridge between dope and trill in a way that was very necessary.”
He continued: “New Yorkers who had creative blinders on and weren’t able to see beyond two feet in front of them began to adopt a different perspective in their process. Rocky represents the beginning of that for me.”
