A$AP Rocky was honored as the recipient of the Virgil Abloh Award in his hometown of Harlem and Rocky paid tribute to the late design dignitary.
The “Fashion Killa” rapper stepped up to the podium on Tuesday night (September 5) at the HFR 16th Annual Fashion Show & Style Awards which went down at the famed Apollo Theater.
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A$AP Rocky showed a ton of love to Virgil Abloh in his speech — which “came from the heart” — and saw him credit the Louis Vuitton menswear director for having a keen eye in discovering the A$AP Mob in Harlem before Rocky’s rap career took off.
“Virgil discovered A$AP as a bunch of kids before I got my record deal and any of that. We wasn’t old enough to get into this club called Le Bain. We were sneaking in type shit,” he began.
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“Virgil peeped us and unbeknownst to us, he was like, ‘Wait, y’all are those Harlem kids. The trendy ones.’ We was tripping like, ‘Wait, Virgil know about us. The fashion world know about us.’ A year later, I become A$AP Rocky.
He continued: “Virgil went on to design my first album cover and my first tour. It’s crazy because to be a trendsetter, it takes a lot of balls… The reason I can talk in front of y’all today is because of Harlem. Thank you Harlem fashion, bro.”
Watch Rocky’s speech below.
Speaking of Rocky’s seminal Long. Live. A$AP debut, Black Thought gave the rapper his flowers for ushering in a new era of NYC Hip Hop in the early 2010s.
“This album ushered in a new era of New York hip-hop,” Black Though 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.
“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.”
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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.”
