In the spring of 2011, XXL rolled out their highly anticipated Freshman list and cover.
Hitting at a moment when blogs had overtaken print as a point of influence, XXL’s roster reflected it, showcasing mixtape titans like Mac Miller and Big KRIT while also including co-signed up and comers like Meek Mill and CyHi the Prince. Style purveyors such as Fred da Godson and YG put on for their coasts while the young man in the middle of the cover, Kendrick Lamar, ended up being pretty damn good himself.
Nowhere to be found was A$AP Rocky.
Then a relatively unknown Harlem rapper, Rocky had occasionally seen singles pop up on blogs with or without the Always $trive And Prosper acronym appearing before his title. The boy born Rakim Meyers – named after the God MC, Rakim Allah – was destined to become hip-hop royalty. His parents had him sporting a dookie rope by the time he was old enough to form sentences, raised in a household that bumped boom-bap over soul jams.
A$AP Rocky’s early ascent (Images via FADER & Pinterest)
Sadly, young Rakim’s upbringing wasn’t all charmed, having stints at homelessness shelters in his youth and scrapping as an adolescent with his second family, the A$AP crew. However, in the summer of 2011 at the tender age of 22, A$AP Rocky’s luck began to change.
Just weeks after XXL had anointed 15-year-old Diggy Simmons as a fashionable Freshmen to watch, the Internet broke by way of “Purple Swag” and soon after “Peso.” Both songs served as the introduction to otherwise unknown A$AP Rocky.
When it came to virality, “Purple Swag” packed a punch by pushing aside all of rap’s regionalism through rebellious youth and unexpected nostalgia. Rapping in a slowed-down style inspired by Houston’s Screwed Up Click and Swishahouse collectives from decades prior, the “Purple Swag” sonics and aesthetics were unlike anything coming out of New York.
“Rocky and A$AP embraced Uptown meets Downtown,” reflects industry legend and former A$AP Rocky co-manager Geno Sims in a conversation with SoleSavy. “I had grown up in Harlem and embraced it but I also hung out in SoHo with a lot of creative people from photographers to directors. Rocky to me was a fusion of a lot of things in hip hop. It was like Andre 3000 meets a little bit of Houston meets a little bit of Cam’ron or even Max B.”
Visually, the music video sent shockwaves, leading with a lip-syncing young lady in a grill and cutting to lifestyle footage that was both basement and trippy.
While “Purple Swag” broke the Internet, “Peso” cut through to radio. Clocking in at only 2:50, “Peso” proved perfect for rotation on Hot 97, providing the most curious sound to come out of New York City in decades. However, it was the visual that put Rocky on the map.
Amassing over 17 million views on YouTube, “Peso” presented Harlem through Rocky’s eyes, putting blunts, bodegas, and dice games in a blender with Black Scale, Supreme, and Rick Owens.
“Rocky was really, really into fashion,” Sims notes. “The thing that always stood out about Rocky was that he could look at the stitch of a designer shirt and tell you the brand, the year it came out, the person who did it, where they used to be a creative director, everything.”
This wasn’t just rare for a rapper, it was rare for anyone. Back in his Bad Boy days, Sims had worked next to Public School’s Maxwell Osborne who was then on staff for Sean John. Only an in-the-field designer could catch details with the same eye, passion, and fearlessness as Rocky.
In the “Peso” video alone, Rocky showed the world who he was and how things were going to be. Famously, he rotated Raf Simons, Rick Owens, and Jeremy Scott sneakers on his feet, iconically draping a FW 2009 Supreme towel over his head.
Liner notes for Live. Love. A$AP (Image by Brock Fetch)
Through just two singles, A$AP Rocky was famous online and across New York City. Both videos presented Rocky as the purveyor of a new look known as ‘street goth,’ positioned in hats that read “FUNERAL,” noir apparel, and runway sneakers that were a far cry from Foamposites.
Rocky and the A$AP Mob’s early mix of aggression and forward style would prove provocative to all, only truly make sense to someone who’d seen a Shayne Oliver Hood by Air fashion show or a Paris presentation by Rick Owens.
All the attention around “Peso” and “Purple Swag” paved the way for his debut mixtape, Live. Love. A$AP, to release on October 31st, 2011.
The Halloween drop date – handpicked by A$AP Yams – was fitting for the rapper that dressed almost exclusively in all-black, spookily rapped through screwed vocals and packed a personality and aesthetic that appeared almost costume to his peers.
A$AP Rocky in Pyrex Vision & Pigalle circa 2012/2013 (Images via Tumblr)
Tricking from day one, Rocky soon had Harlem and beyond in the A$AP spirit.
“Kids wasn’t dressing like that,” Sims reflects on the time before the mixtape. “But when Rocky started blowing up? I remember a picture of Justin Bieber in the airport and he was dressed like Rocky! This was when Rocky was rocking Pyrex Vision and he’d perform with the shorts and the long johns under and the hoodie cut. I started seeing kids and certain artists dressed like that.”
Suddenly, the same world that overlooked Rocky was looking just like him.
Lucky for Rocky, he wasn’t reliant on just one look.
Aside from giving credence to goth garb, Rocky reinvented the buzz around streetwear by bringing archival labels like Supreme and Stussy back into the forefront. Just the same, he’d introduce the world to new brands that blurred genre lines like Hood By Air, Pigalle, Palace, and Virgil Abloh’s various ventures like Been Trill and Pyrex Vision before OFF-WHITE even existed.
A$AP Rocky in the 2006 Supreme Diplomats tee circa 2013 (Image via Complex)
From the mixtape on, the momentum around Rocky’s rep kept mounting with the landscape of rap rapidly evolving. The top of 2012 saw Rocky cover Complex Magazine with Jeremy Scott, positioning hip hop and fashion in tighter terms on a mainstream level. In the interview, Rocky compared the influence of Raf Simons and other designers to that of 2Pac, Jay-Z, and Nas.
He was just as inspired by Scott as he was many rappers, if not more, riding with the designer from day one and breaking barriers all the way.
“At the 2012 BET Awards, Rocky brought Jeremy Scott there,” Sims looks back. “At the show, Swizz Beatz said to him, ‘Everybody’s rockin’ designer but you came with everybody’s favorite designer.’ That brought me back to something Puff would do. It wasn’t about outdoing each other, it was about doing the unthinkable. When he said that, I just knew he was on another echelon.”
By the end of 2012, Rocky’s footprints were all over the increasingly merging worlds of hip hop and fashion. Not only was Drake wearing Hood by Air in music videos, but even Kanye West was performing in white-on-white Air Force 1 Mids, a movement brought back by Rocky and the rest of the A$AP Mob.
Fittingly, Rocky’s influence soon saw brand deals and collaborations, most notably his Adidas drop with friend Jeremy Scott in 2013. While Rocky has since done deals with Under Armour, Vans, and various fashion houses, he’s always moved with a freedom to rock whatever he wants.
“Exclusivity comes with a big check,” notes Sims, citing his learnings from working under Puff Daddy at Bad Boy. “If you want it, you’ve got to pay.”
Throughout his ten years of fame, Rocky has remained diligent as an ambassador of brands while still very much his own man. Few have shifted an entire genre like he has aesthetically and even fewer have proven to be first so many times. Whether box braids or box logos, Rocky is the origin for the most signature looks in hip-hop fashion.
If you need a benchmark on just how far A$AP Rocky moved the needle in hip hop fashion, consider the XXL Freshman cover from 2017 where effectively every artist is dressing like A$AP Rocky in 2011.
A$AP Rocky in Milan wearing OG “Metallic Navy” Air Jordan 1 Highs circa 2017 (Image via Vogue)
Even when focusing on footwear, Rocky was digging in the crates for original Air Jordan 1s as far back as 2016 only to be all but over it by 2018.
In 2021, Air Jordan 1s from 1985, 1994, and even 2021 take the cake as the most coveted relic in sneaker culture. Again, Rocky was on this a whole half-decade ago, rotating ultra-rare “Metallics” with tried and true Bulls looks.
From Gosha Rubchinskiy to Maison Margiela, his dedication to dad shoes predates popularity while his affinity for Nike SB is punctuated not by hyped Dunks but rather Futura P-Rod collaborations.
While many dress like Rocky, rarely does anyone do it before him.
“The brutal confidence of Rocky is that he always was like, ‘I did it first, I’m gonna do it first and I got it first,’” Sims states. “He still holds that. You see it when he goes to the Met Gala, you still see that confidence.”
Ten years ago, A$AP Rocky was overlooked.
Today, he remains forever first, always at the origin and forefront of every look.
