.Live Review: A$AP Rocky at Avalon

Just before performing “Peso” late Friday evening at Avalon Nightclub, A$AP Rocky stood and watched as the packed room chanted his name as if it were their dying words—and he smiled, frozen, turning his back to gather himself and for perhaps the first time, to acknowledge the possibility that he is greater than even he knows.
“I always dreamed of this. I always wondered if you fucked with me out here,” he said, grinning and glassy-eyed. However vain and reckless Rocky claims to be, he can’t help but expose the conceit that he likes being liked. What’s weird is that he’s made, what, 12 songs? And they’re all fairly similar—at least in subject matter, production value and charm. So if ever there was a question about “why” the world has taken almost violently to the A$AP movement, this show would answer it.
Youth played a part. Youth always plays a part. The shelf life for most rappers is very short, and A$AP knows this better than anyone else—even Drake, who he would open for the following evening at the San Jose State Event Center. A$AP’s DJ played a few Biggie tracks, commemorating the 15th anniversary of the rapper’s death, and though the audience had eaten their “hip-hop vegetables”—a steady diet of Mobb Deep, Wu Tang, and Biggie Smalls—it dawned on me that most of Rocky’s fans at the all-ages show were barely in kindergarten when Biggie passed. They might vaguely know the lyrics to “Ready to Die,” but they definitely know every single Waka Flocka Flame song in existence.
Like any great hip-hop show, the evening felt a little riotous. Girls who’d probably spent all day getting gussied up for one chance to fall into Rocky’s purview were crammed against the stage. I overheard many of them complaining about very strange assaults—one woman said a man rested his chin on the nape of her neck, yelling “A-SAP!” directly into her ear. He was later escorted out.
Watching the audience was a little more fun than watching Rocky, himself mesmerized by the crowd—elbows-to-elbows, X’s on their palms, jeering a nasally and unconvincing opener, crying “Rocky! Rocky!,” making the most curious of requests. He had them eating out of his palm all night, and in return, they slipped ziplock bags of weed to him, whittled blunts, phone numbers.
And he seemed overjoyed to be there, and happier to be accepted. He only attempted the meekest of angry commentary. “I don’t wear diamonds,” which he deemed the property of “hippies.” Though very much a stylish lothario, quick to namecheck designers Rick Owens, Raf Simons, or embrace the eccentric schoolboy look of Brooks Brother’s Thom Browne, he looked more somber, head to toe in black. Still, he used his pedestal to scold some: “I fucks with Hypebeast, but fuck the posers that check that blog to get fly, n–ga!”
The evening’s best moments came when Rocky finally acknowledged the melting pot of influences that make up his body of work: Houston, New Orleans, Nashville and Cleveland. Using the instrumental for Three Six Mafia’s “Sippin’ On Some Sizzurp” to play against his own “Purple Swag,” the connection might have seemed more literal than stylistic. Realizing it quickly, he segued back into the original beat, and the crowd seemed thankful to be in the present instead of the past. When his DJ dropped Juvenile’s “Ha,” the Cash Money track featuring a teenaged Lil Wayne, Rocky just grinned some more, said “fuck it,” and dove into the crowd.
View more photos from the show.

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