A$AP Rocky has been honored with the prestigious Cultural Innovator Award at the 2024 Fashion Awards.
According to the official description, “The Cultural Innovator Award celebrates a leading innovator and image-maker in the entertainment industry, who over the course of the year, has created viral fashion moments which have had a profound impact on the fashion industry and wider culture.”
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During the ceremony in the UK on Monday (December 2), the Harlem rapper donned a Bottega Veneta navy suit as he accepted the award, while a beaming Rihanna proudly filmed from the audience.
“I’ma come clean, this is surreal right now. This is crazy!” Rocky said on stage. “It’s about fuckin’ time, you know what I’m saying? But honestly though, I’m very honored. Being a cultural innovator, it means so much to me. Especially being a rapper, having endeavors in the fashion industry, and I think that the lines are definitely merged now.”
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He concluded: “To all the young designers who was nominated today who may or may not have won tonight, I just hope that this is a ticket of encouragement to show you that you can do this shit too.”
On the music side of things, A$AP Rocky’s newest album Don’t Be Dumb was supposed to arrive in August, but after being pushed back to an unspecified fall date, it appears to now have an even longer delay.
In November, fans noticed retailers have canceled pre-orders of the vinyl edition of the album with no further information being released.
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During his A$AP Puma Takeover launch event in NYC days later, Rocky failed to offer much more insight, simply telling a fan the effort will arrive “ASAP, n-gga” when asked about it.
Rocky announced the August 30 release date back in June while debuting his AWGE “American Sabotage” clothing collection during Paris Fashion Week as he walked the runway in front of his Rihanna, Pharrell, Pusha T and others.
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Don’t Be Dumb will serve as his first album in six years and the follow up to his third LP Testing, which arrived to mixed reviews in 2018.
As for the long time in between, Rocky partly blames leaks. “They gotta stop leaking it! These dummies got to stop leaking shit,” he told Complex last year. “Every time, we have to go back to the drawing board, but right now I think it’s in a place where we tightened it up and we really can’t make or break anything right now.”
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Then in a cover story for Billboard in late August, he revealed it was pushed back again to the fall while once again addressing the leaks.
“At this point I’ve been working on music for six years, but they leak my music and I get over it and say, ‘Fuck it,’” he said. “They leak a lot of the music and it ruins it. Like my ‘Taylor Swift’ video. I was pissed off about it, so I never released it.”
Rocky himself described the album as “grim” and a mix of “German expressionism [and] ghetto futurism.” He also revealed he played the project for legendary director Tim Burton, who he unsuccessfully attempted to recruit to create the cover art.
He did, however, manage to secure musical contributions from composer Danny Elfman, including on a song produced by The Alchemist.
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Other prominent producers also expected to make the album include Metro Boomin, Tyler, The Creator, Pharrell, Madlib and Mike Dean.
