How A$AP Rocky's "Live.Love.A$AP" Redefined the Trap Game

A$AP Rocky released his debut mixtape Live.Love.A$AP two years ago on halloween. His singles "Peso" and "Purple Swag" blew up by creating low-budget viral videos filmed on the streets in Harlem, depicting the daily life of an A$AP member. Both videos had the same basic content - a crew of 20 A$AP members swagged out, walking down the streets, playing dice, smoking blunts and drinking 40's of Olde Englishe with a bad b**** or two or three.  

The producers on the tape include, Clams Casino, ASAP Ty Beats, DJ Burn One, and SpaceGhostPurrp. Production elements contain "chopped and screwed" vocals (electronically lowered voice influenced by Houston hip hop), slow tempos (influenced from Houston), many samples, and obvious trap elements were very prevalent throughout like deep 808's, emphasized hi hats, snares/claps, and on-beat rhythms. The tape carried a generally a darker tone than most Houston hip hop from the skewing of sampled vocals and chords/notes that were used in the beats. 

Rocky's vocal rhythm is something that makes him unique. Very emphasized rhythms whose lines parallel one after the other. This is an aspect of Rocky that he has kept for his career, heard in his album "Long Live A$AP".

Interestingly, a reason why A$AP's music is so unique is because he isn't from the south like most other trap artists. He's reps Harlem, New York and takes influence from Northeast rap as well - heard from his vocal content which is mostly about his life in Harlem, blowing up, and bad girls. His unique "swag" landed him a major record deal with Polo Grounds/RCA Records. During a press release, Rocky commented on his deal:

“I feel great about the new deal; I believe it was destined and with a label like Polo Grounds & RCA behind me I don’t see anything stopping us,” says A$AP Rocky. “I wanted go with the right partner that can help get a bigger platform to get me and my A$AP crew’s music and movement out. I expect to be in the same league as today’s most relevant artists, and there are just some things you can’t do on your own.  The plan is to not only release great music, culture, and style for myself and A$AP worldwide, but to also be the next major artist/exec in the business and make great business men out of my brothers.”

The reason this tape is so popular was because Rocky portrayed himself in a light that no one has seen in hip hop. His swag was different, style (clothing) different, and whole image different than that of southern hip hop. It was a breath of fresh air, and a reason for creative production inspiration. Live.Love.A$AP is an example of a widely successful experimental revolutionary tape that, in my opinion, is a masterpiece.

EDM - Where trap gets some influence

This post is gonna be a little different. In this post, I'm not going to talk about the trap I usually talk about - the hip-hop, southern culture influenced trap that is my favorite. Today, we're going to talk a little bit about EDM, a style that trap is heavily influenced by.

EDM stands for "Electronic Dance Music", a genre that quickly gained popularity in the past few years. Although the term "EDM" was first heard around 1985, that wasn't the type of EDM you think of when you hear someone say EDM. EDM really first started in the 80's and 90's with disco and analog (non-digital) synthesizers. If you take a listen to the EDM back then, you can hear some similarities.

Take a listen to this.

You can hear the similarities to modern-day EDM - syncopated and exaggerated timing, random synthesizer sounds, experimental mixing, sampling, southern "clicks", and of course the hi-hats!

Now-a-days EDM, specifically Trap EDM, uses virtually all digital synthesizers on computers. It is just way too easy to take a synthesizer on the computer and change it to sound however you'd like. No need to mess with analog anymore - it takes way too much time to set up, program, record, etc... Using MIDI keyboards (mini keyboards that plug directly in your computer) makes the EDM production world so much easier.

The EDM capital of the world is MIAMI, which hosts Ultra fest every year, a festival that is ONLY EDM. When you hear "clubbing" it's all EDM they're going to be playing. It gets everybody in the rave mood - EDM isn't supposed to be deep. It's supposed to be interesting - waiting for the bass drop, experimental sounds, crazy sampling - it's arguably the most versatile type of music because an EDM producer can add any sound they like. I've never heard two EDM songs that sound similar.