Hip hop’s underbelly is bursting

While Jay-Z and Kanye sit on their thrones distributing commercial fare, something is brewing in the underbelly of hip hop. Just recently, trailblazers like The Weeknd, Mac Miller, and SpaceGhostPurrp flooded Brussels with their rhymes and raps, and this week, Rakim Mayers alias A$AP Rocky will be here to prove that hip hop has a new future. Late last year, the BBC listed A$AP Rocky on its Sound of 2012 list beside upcoming young fries like Skrillex, Azealia Banks, and Michael Kiwanuka. Since then, the 23-year-old New York-based talent, named after the second half of the ground-breaking rap duo Eric B. & Rakim, has closed a multimillion-dollar deal with RCA/Sony. Solely on the basis of... “Peso” and “Purple swag”, two songs/music videos that went viral via bloggers on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube and built a solid fan base for A$AP Rocky without a single release via the usual channels. The lucrative deal incited the contempt of other homies, but A$AP Rocky doesn’t seem to worry about that. In the meantime he has been busy with the mix tape LoveLiveA$AP and his debut LongLiveA$AP will follow in July. The subjects A$AP Rocky treats are hardly new – drug use, women, violence... But sound-wise, he does interesting things. He is less roaring than, for example, Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All and less poppy than Whiz Khalifa and Kid Cudi. His languid beats, which seem to be influenced by the Houston scene, are doped up with weed fumes and have a high chill factor, a fitting tonal palette for his swaggy raps. More than anything else, he appears to have varied tastes – unless you know another rapper who records versions of Neil Young’s “Old Man” or The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony”? At the AB, A$AP Rocky will be accompanied by the British prodigy Star Slinger and the female rap duo THEESatisfaction, which recently debuted with awE naturalE, a sultry mix of jazzy soul, slow funk, and socially committed hip hop.

A$AP Rocky 11/6, 20.00, €20/23,
Ancienne Belgique, boulevard Anspachlaan 110, Brussel/Bruxelles,
02-548.24.24, info@abconcerts.be, www.abconcerts.be