It’s sort of difficult to avoid a sense of vertigo while watching ASAP Rocky‘s latest, Moby-sampling music video for “A$AP Forever.” Just hours after debuting the track online and performing it during his appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Rocky premiered the swooping, Dexter Navy-directed video on Youtube.
The track takes its sample from Moby’s 2000 easy listening hit, “Porcelain,” but of course, ramps everything up to eleven with the addition of a booming drum breakdown along with some rapid-fire raps from Rocky and a washed-out, screwed-up vocal sample that simply repeats “ASAP” over and over. Toward the end of the song, “Porcelain” truly breaks out as the beat fades away and Rocky drops into an LSD-rendered Sunken Place in his now-trademark crash dummy coverall.
The video is the first indication that Rocky might just be working on a full collection of music after loose tracks like “Cocky,” “Above,” and “5ive Stars” found their way to his social media amidst cryptic “Testing” posts and advertisements for his AWGE collective’s merchandise. Rocky has also been one of the many rappers to co-sign Memphis newcomer BlocBoy JB on the energetic loose track “Bad Company.”
Rocky has always been known for unusual sample sources, and spacey, whacked-out visuals, but “A$AP Forever” might be his most ambitious offering to date. If it’s any indication of what his next album has in store, he just might carve out a whole new section of rap for fans of trippy, acid-laced remakes of turn of the millennium elevator music.
