A$AP Rocky – Always $trive and Prosper

A$AP Rocky – Always $trive and Prosper

Every sev­eral years it ap­pears we all be­come wit­nesses to a spe­cial music tal­ent. The type of tal­ent whose body of work seem­ingly tran­scends be­yond the plateaus of music. Their in­di­vid­u­al­ity and swag­ger: ef­fort­less.

This per­son we refer to is A$AP Rocky, and with all sys­tems going, 2012 is des­tined to be a stel­lar year for him to say the least.

We caught up with the young Harlemite as he dis­cussed some of the inner work­ings of his A$AP fam­ily and some of the things he’ll be get­ting into. “Al­ways Strive and Pros­per” -A$AP

First off, the ques­tion many have been won­der­ing – who is the girl in the “Pur­ple Swag” video?

Anna Perp man, she’s a trill ass chick from Harlem, and yes she’s Cau­casian, gold grill shin­ing, a bad b*tch, and yes she uses the “N” word on a full-time reg­u­lar basis. Well not born, but she lives in Harlem, she's trill as fuck, noth­ing generic about her, not a poser, I just can’t wait for the world to see her. She kind of dis­ap­peared, be­cause she was get­ting a lit­tle too much at­ten­tion. So she's in North Car­olina with her par­ents but she’ll be back soon. She’s trill as fuck, she’s down there breed­ing pit bulls, she’s into that stuff.

How did the term “A$AP” first get in­vented and when was the first time it came up?

It stands for “Al­ways Strive And Pros­per,” and I didn’t join A$AP until 2007. So for me, I used to just hang in Harlem. I was the guy that used to just fuck with all the bitches and get fly shit. At the time, A$AP was a crew out there that didn’t get a lot of recog­ni­tion but they caught my eye be­cause real will al­ways rec­og­nize the real, you know? The down­town (Man­hat­tan) types kind of peo­ple only fucked with A$AP at the time, you know like SoHo.

Then these guys from Harlem kind of filled the gap, be­cause they were re­ally on that shit be­fore it was cool to dress how they dress right now, you know what I mean? These dudes were re­ally doing it at a time when you would re­ally get pa­tron­ized for this type of thing. I felt we shared a lot in com­mon, from our views and re­al­iz­ing we are out­casts and just say “fuck it we’re going to be our­selves.” The game didn’t ac­cept us at first and now it’s like they have no choice, these n*ggas have to love us now.
I joined the crew in 2007 and even­tu­ally more peo­ple have been get­ting down, so I didn’t start it or am I the leader. I just made it hot. The real will al­ways rec­og­nize real.

No doubt. Your mix­tape LiveLoveA$AP re­ceived very a pos­i­tive re­sponse within the in­dus­try and be­yond, so it makes sense to reis­sue it com­mer­cially. When did this move first crossed your mind and what re­ac­tion do you ex­pect from the fans?

I ex­pect the fans to fuck with it, it’s just one of things, it is what it is. I got re­ally, re­ally good feed­back off this mix­tape al­though it was so dif­fer­ent. Yet peo­ple were will­ing to lis­ten to it at a time when the masses were re­luc­tant to get fa­mil­iar with some­thing so dif­fer­ent. But for the most part I got a lot of good re­ac­tion, and we’re going to re­mas­ter it, deluxe edi­tion, dif­fer­ent fea­tures, dif­fer­ent songs, and put it out for pur­chase. It’s going to be cool, it’s going to be a good look and think peo­ple are going to fuck with it.

With a record deal worth $3 mil­lion dol­lars, what are your plans for the A$AP move­ment? Re­fer­ring to fu­ture re­leases and over­all vision...​maybe even be­yond music?

As far as we can go, there’s no limit bro, every­thing, every­thing! I’m so se­ri­ous. We’re so tal­ented and I don’t want to be so cliche but it is what it is. We got song writ­ers, pro­duc­ers, ac­tors, ath­letes, we got some trill ass moth­er­fuck­ers man.