ASAP Rocky Breaks Down How He's Influenced Fashion and Music on 'Desus & Mero'

The Rocky effect is real.

View this video on YouTube

youtu.be

The only late-night show in history that can reasonably argue that it books nothing but illustrious guests, day in and day out, continued that pattern on Monday.

ASAP Rocky joined Desus Nice and The Kid Mero on Monday's new episode of VICELAND's Desus & Mero to chop it up about Tumblr, ASAP Yams, LSD, becoming a veteran of the game, and more. Asked about Funkmaster Flex's recent assertion that a "bunch of rappers" had stolen Rocky's "swag," Rocky elaborated on the strength of his influence.

SDco0Tf5

"I feel like, you know, to get in the game, you gotta have like braids or dreadlocks, gold teeth, charisma," Rocky said around the 4:20 mark. "You gotta have fashion sense. Everybody tries to at least have one, right? Before us, there was people in fashion and whatnot, but it was normally only like Kanye or Pharrell, or Puff before them. Now, that's standard. You've gotta have some type of freshness. We brought that back into hip-hop."

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

The Rocky effect, he added, extends well beyond fashion. "Aside from fashion goes, just the way that, like, the monotone or the way I would pitch my voices, just the nuances or my beat selections or the way I produce songs, I feel like a lot of kids that come up now inherited that," he said. "With that being said, that's what I'm doing it for. I'm not trying to point down on them or whatever. I know who Flex  was directly talking to. It was probably, like, established artists who have no right or business doing that kind of stuff from contemporary artists, but it is what it is. We living in a day and time where none of this shit matters anyway, so it's all smiles."

Catch the full extended edition of Rocky's Desus & Mero chat via the video up top.

Latest in Music