As usual, ASAP Rocky made a memorable entrance on Saturday night.
Wearing dark sunglasses, walnut-sized diamond earrings and a T-shirt with a bulletproof vest printed on it, the rapper, style maven and professional wife guy began his headlining set at this weekend’s Rolling Loud California festival by descending down a cable hanging from a helicopter suspended over the show’s main stage as his song “ASAP Forever” blared across the grounds of Inglewood’s Hollywood Park.
“I’ma be honest with y’all — I’m so happy to see y’all right now, y’all don’t even understand,” he told the crowd once he’d reached the stage. “It was real hectic for a n— recently. It got real sticky real quick.”
ASAP Rocky makes an entrance on a helicopter hoisted by a crane.
(Michael Owen Baker/For The Times)
Saturday’s performance was ASAP Rocky’s first since he was acquitted last month in a high-stakes trial in Los Angeles in which he faced two counts of felony assault after being accused of shooting a former friend and collaborator near the W Hollywood hotel in 2021. The 36-year-old Harlem native made headlines throughout the trial, both for the extravagant outfits he wore to court and for the presence in the courtroom of his partner, the pop superstar Rihanna, with whom he shares two young sons. Yet a guilty verdict threatened to derail the career of a hip-hop A-lister who in some ways had already moved on from music.
With a bleary, almost hallucinatory sound that blended elements of rap from New York, L.A., Houston and Atlanta, Rocky was a key figure in the 2010s dismantling of hip-hop’s once-rigid style orthodoxies; his early music — singles like “Peso” and “Purple Swag” and his debut album, “Long. Live. ASAP,” which topped the Billboard 200 in 2013 — laid crucial groundwork for many of the young disrupters who now dominate the genre (not least Playboi Carti, who’s set to headline Night 2 of Rolling Loud on Sunday).
As his inheritors have taken over, Rocky has focused on his fashion deals with Puma and Ray-Ban, on his acting gig in an upcoming Spike Lee movie and on his relationship with Rihanna, whom he frequently — and endearingly — turns up in public to cheer on, as at her Super Bowl halftime show in 2023. His most recent album, “Testing,” came out nearly seven years ago, though he’s been promising that a new LP is coming soon.
ASAP Rocky performs.
(Michael Owen Baker/For The Times)
All of which has left his place in music uncertain enough that Drake felt compelled to take a shot at Rocky during his recent feud with Kendrick Lamar. “I ain’t even know you rapped still ’cause they only talking ’bout your fit again,” Drake said in his song “Family Matters,” “Probably gotta have a kid again before you think of dropping any s— again.”
This performance at rap’s biggest festival franchise, then, wasn’t just an opportunity for Rocky to celebrate his acquittal but a chance to reassert his musical standing — something of a tradition at Rolling Loud, which hosted Travis Scott in 2023 in the wake of his ill-fated Astroworld festival and which hosted Kanye West last year after a series of antisemitic remarks led many in the entertainment industry to sever ties with him.
By the miserable standards of the latter gig — in which Kanye simply milled around a stage as his records played over the festival’s sound system — Rocky’s set Saturday was a success insofar as he had a microphone and he actually used it. But the show, which started an hour after it was scheduled and lasted only 45 minutes, still felt somewhat underwhelming (at least after the helicopter moment).
Sexyy Red was also on the bill Saturday.
(Michael Owen Baker/For The Times)
He did a boisterous “Riot (Rowdy Pipe’n)” that had guys jumping on cars as they waved upside-down American flags, and he jumped on a car himself for “Tailor Swif,” in which he recounts his hard-won come-up; he brought out Skepta for “Praise the Lord (Da Shine)” and did “Highjack,” a 2024 collaboration with the folk-pop singer Jessica Pratt that shows he can still assemble unlikely combinations.
Yet new songs like “Stop Snitching” and “Your Honor” — both clearly shaped by his experience in the criminal justice system — were pretty lumpy; neither had much of a chorus nor a coherent political argument, which is what he led you to expect by surrounding himself for the former with men holding flashlights and wearing tactical gear and by doing the latter from behind a speechmaker’s podium.
“In America it’s a lot of s— separating us right now, but when I look in this crowd, I see unity,” he said, which — OK.
Rocky also skipped most of the striking old hits that established his place in hip-hop: no “Peso,” no “Goldie,” certainly no “F— Problems,” which feels these days like a relic of a lost age given that it featured both Drake and Lamar. Indeed, given Rolling Loud’s teenage and 20-something audience — not to mention the preponderance of young acts onstage including Sexyy Red and Peso Pluma — you can understand why he might not have called attention to his age. But here it wasn’t obvious what he wants to do instead.
Peso Pluma performs.
(Michael Owen Baker/For The Times)
