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A$AP Rocky arrives 'At. Long. Last.'

Patrick Ryan
USA TODAY
A$AP Rocky is brash but likes to think of himself as a regular guy.

NEW YORK — There's no right way to listen to A$AP Rocky's new album.

"It's just one of those things where you get to dissect it how you want," he says, chatting in the backseat of an SUV as he heads from his SoHo penthouse to Harlem for a Q&A late one afternoon. "For me, I had to listen to it in a whole piece, as one. Word from somebody else: it's a masterpiece."

Perhaps self-conscious about seeming cocky, he grins and lets out a hearty laugh, changing the subject as he points out a bikini-clad model on a nearby billboard and asks if she's Adriana Lima. (She isn't.)

Still, it's not unreasonable to expect greatness from the 26-year-old's new album, At. Long. Last. A$AP (out June 2). After all, the Harlem-bred rapper (real name: Rakim Mayers) has been touted as one of hip-hop's most promising young MCs ever since his breakout 2011 mixtape, Live. Love. A$AP. His debut album, Long. Live. A$AP, arrived at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart two years later, fronted by Hot 100-charting singles Wild for the Night featuring Skrillex, and the all-star F---in' Problems with Drake, Kendrick Lamar and 2 Chainz.

Rocky has never concerned himself with radio hits, he says ("I've always been the type to be like, 'Aw, man, why we gotta worry about these singles?"). It's a mindset that carries over into his spacey, psychedelic, and moody At. Long. Last., which he recorded last summer and fall, and just finished mixing and mastering this month. In addition to smoking weed and using hallucinatory drugs while making the album, he was musically influenced by older rock/punk acts such as The Castaways, T.Rex and The Stooges.

The sonic shift is most evident on the stirring Everyday, a bluesier album cut produced by Mark Ronson (megahit Uptown Funk), and featuring vocals from Rod Stewart (via a sample of Python Lee Jackson's In a Broken Dream) and Miguel.

With this album, "I'm gonna just come back and get people to the music again," Rocky says, leaning in close. "You know what I hate hearing? 'He's in a movie, he's handsome, he's (with) this chick.' It's like...all the hype. I don't need the attention of being a celebrity. I'm a regular (guy), man."

A$AP Rocky chats with moderator Jeff "Chairman" Mao at the Red Bull Music Academy Festival on May 7, 2015.

A regular guy whose relationships with rapper Iggy Azalea and model Chanel Iman have generated some tabloid fodder the last few years, as did his arrest for allegedly attacking two photographers in New York in 2012. But for the most part, he's been able to avoid the more scandalous trappings of fame — instead, establishing himself as a something of a fashion icon, co-starring in Sundance hit Dope (in theaters June 19), and eyeing more movies in the future. (Although he plays a drug dealer in Dope, "I wanna work my way up, get some roles that don't fit the typical rapper cliché," he says).

He is also focusing on finishing a solo album by his longtime mentor, the late A$AP Yams, who died of an accidental drug overdose in January at age 26. Although he doesn't offer much about the A$AP Mob rap crew founder, he insists he has "to finish it. I'm obligated to and I want to."

As the car rolls closer to Madiba Harlem, where Red Bull Music Academy is hosting a conversation with the rapper, Rocky says he'd like to "change the world with (his) music" and help people not feel like outsiders. It's a point he comes back to at the sold-out Q&A, moderated by hip-hop journalist Jeff "Chairman" Mao.

Asked by Mao if he sees himself as a "weirdo" or an outcast, Rocky says, "Yeah, yeah, I still feel like that. But I'm just comfortable with me. It is what it is."

But "as a counterargument," Mao continues, "you make cool music, you're well-dressed, you're popular. We should all be such lucky weirdos."

Rocky chuckles. "That was the dopest compliment / insult ever."

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