Rakim Mayers, 24, known as A$AP Rocky, Pretty Flacko or Lord Flacko. His music resonates with power and fearlessness. His sophisticated style — his clothes, his words, the fusion of sound and images in his music videos Wild for the Night and F**kin’ Problems — makes him the New York icon of multimedia hip-hop.
Rocky endured the kind of troubled childhood that most kids don’t escape: his father went to jail, his older brother was killed, and Rocky wound up shuffling through shelters with his mother and sister for a time. But his singleminded confidence enabled him to not only survive, but thrive with good-humored ease and few hints of bitterness about his past. Actor, Producer, Musician, Fashion Icon, he is now recognized across the globe for his inspirational and analogic tracks and ideas.
Rocky’s ferociously energetic mix tape Live.Love.A$AP quickly caught fire with hip-hop heads, music bloggers, and nominal tastemakers when he unleashed it on the world via the Internet. In fact, the furor was so great that large numbers of those most standoffish of recordindustry gatekeepers soon found themselves frothed up and in a tizzy over the 24-year-old Harlem-bred rapper’s peculiar blend of influences, which include Southern regional hip-hop styles (like the sloweddown, doped-out beats of the Houston subgenre of screw music) and the world of high fashion.