A$AP Rocky’s favourite A$AP Rocky verse
The kind of swagger that A$AP Rocky came with in 2011 could not be faked.
‘Peso’ dropped onto the web as a smouldering slow burner, its tinted sound and Harlem drawl slicing through a landscape of boom and bark. It started spreading out of the blog circles and into regular radio, where the debate changed: New York rap could still be cool and still have sting in it.
‘Peso’ was now the ticket into the world of hardened rap that Rocky was now in, a venture that made the announcement of cool without objection.
The superficiality of the song was self-evident. A pretty boy intro, a slow swing, which was not in a hurry. But hidden away in the second verse was a line which Rocky still quotes as among his own favourites. Another little alphabet game from A to G, which stamped his identity. It is not the type of line that screams technical ability, but is presented with such offhand accuracy that it is not forgotten.
The bar itself is plain in print and impossible to perform. He reads through the letters, grinning slyly, touching “double D to the cheek, E to a chemical nod, F to a shrug and G to a crown”. It is school lingo turned into cult slang. The beat is about to fall right behind the pocket and Rocky gets to breathe with each letter. Critics saw an MC who was capable of contorting ordinary language to haute couture, and fans played it back as evidence that Rocky had more than just style in his charm.
New York rap might slide, not stomp, as this track ushered in a period of cloud-rap glamour and ease. It is not nostalgia when Rocky calls it one of his proudest lines, it’s recognition. The line is a stylish proclamation of how a Harlem kid with a slow drawl and a swift eye would do what he wanted with the city instead of the other way round.
Reflectively, that verse seems to be a thesis statement. Rocky would go on to explore fashion, psychedelia, Southern cadences and high art, but the basis was all found here. ‘Peso’ heralded an artist who enjoys defying anticipation without compromising integrity, and the alphabet line forms the jewel in this crown. It is light-hearted, irreverent and keenly conscious of presentation.
Even more than ten years later, ‘Peso’ has not lost its form. It did not do it because it was following a trend, but because it was going at its speed. Not because it chased a trend, but because it moved at its own pace. That second verse did not need to dominate the song to define it. Like Rocky himself at the time, it lingered, smirked, and let everyone else catch up.