I’ve been rapping, and telling stories since I was young. Born in Compton, I didn’t have the easiest life, I grew up around crime and everything but it didn’t hurt me as much as it influenced me. Tupac Shakur is my biggest influence, with my music being influenced by him, along with some of the aggression in some of my songs being influenced by Eminem. I want equality. My newest album, “To Pimp a Butterfly” has influenced teachers to start teaching my album to their students. They’ve compared it to powerful novels about racism and cultural movements.
Ferguson has helped influence my album because of the whole racism and police brutality. The Black Lives Matter movement is a huge part of my music, with how I want equality. While recording To Pimp a Butterfly, I was going through deep depression, suicidal thoughts, and survivor’s guilt. It’s hard to know you made it so far while starting with nothing but knowing you can’t help all of your friends and family get out like you did. As much as my song, “i,” describes how I love myself, my song, “u,” describes how I feel about how I’ve actually felt about myself.
The sense of hopelessness, but it all helped my music. I mentions a lot of this in my poem that I recite in several songs on To Pimp a Butterfly. I’ve been called the most influential rapper since Tupac’s death, for the messages that I put out, and tell in my music. With everything from loving yourself, talking about depression, to racism and equality. With what I rap about, I want to spread the message about everything I can, while showing people you can rise from the bottom.
I have influenced so many people and I hope I’m able to influence so many more. Have you ever experienced an album that has truly touched your soul? Has it ever made you think you’ll never hear music as good as what you have just heard? For me it all started on May 27th, 2015. When the album At Long Last A$AP was released a week early on the 26th, although I didn’t find out until the day after. I scrambled to my computer so I could listen to the what I thought was (and was right) going the be a masterpiece.
Although Kendrick Lamar’s album “To Pimp a Butterfly,” came out a few months earlier and gave extremely good messages, I look at that as more of a story and a message (although it was also a masterpiece of an album and Kendrick is one of my favorite rappers) rather than an album. The fact that A$AP Rocky re recorded songs on the album after another A$AP Mob member, A$AP Yams died and dedicated the album to him is so great and truly touches my heart. After the release of his first studio album, A$AP Rocky spent time to learn more about making beats, and working on his lyric writing so he could improve from Live.
Love. A$AP, which was a great album it’s self. A$AP himself has stated that none of his songs are the same, in which I completely agree. He’ll go from songs about clothes and fashion, to songs about partying. The album’s abbreviation is A. L. L. A which is close to the god “Allah,” like the name of the god MC. A$AP is also named after Rakim. So clearly he wants listeners to know that he he some sort of god, or rap god. So as I’ve stated, A. L. L. A definitely deserves album of the year.
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