EVAN

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The difficulties undermining the efforts of any long-awaited release are prevalent unless such a release is both exceeding of its expectation and is so in unexpected and innovate ways. 

Our personal expectations, especially when concerning an artist of whom we would consider ourselves diehard fans, go through a period of extensive and aggressive growth when inklings of a project come to light. But whether or not months, even years of building continue or simply dim into a quiet darkness without a proper materialization, we eventually lose hope for the project's date of release. 

But that same sense of hopelessness doesn't tend to affect our expectation of the project's quality. In fact, the biggest problem with a drawn-out release is that with each passing moment, the weight of expectation only waxes.

Yet somehow, projects beyond a duality of unprecedented expectation occasionally come not only to be the trademark releases of an artist's canon but can even come to be defining moments in music history. 

Recently, Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp A Butterfly, Frank Ocean's Blond, and now, A$AP Rocky's Testing.

It’s not an easy thing to do – making the outright creative decisions that stray from a sense of normalcy in what is expected. But then again, Rocky has never once pursued any of his creative passions with boundaries. A no-fucks-given-what-anybody-thinks kind of attitude is after all, what his true fans really love about him. But what he has done here with Testing is unprecedented in the ways that, as mentioned before, only the keystone projects from some of modernity’s most resonant creators have accomplished. 

Testing is bold. It’s innovative. It displays an utmost sort of creative endowment that could only come from a genius mind. And yet, it is beyond genius. In its wisdom, in its weight, in its downright grit and distortionism, it lays the track for the future while simultaneously being the best that the present has to offer. It may come to be ultimately influential in ways even Rocky hasn’t yet achieved in his career. 

Live.Love.A$AP once drew into the limelight a vibrant sort of psychedelia that hadn’t yet been so popularized in hip-hop. In the project’s wake, hip-hop came to resemble the funk-inspired, mellow-tone groove that drove it into the halls of stoner anthem infamy.

LONG.LIVE.A$AP brought with it a hard-hitting but relatable high-energy vibe without the cheesiness plaguing the then party anthem scene of overwhelming production and underwhelming everything else. Hip-hop took a turn towards a similar approach after its release and A$AP’s subsequent explosion that delivered him tableside at the dinner for the genre’s royalty.

At.Long.Last.A$AP is often underappreciated, as most follow-up projects to a breakout album are, because it wasn’t a mirror image of its predecessor. It was an honest, open, an emotionally-stirring project made in the memory of the late A$AP yams. It displayed a more thorough understanding of music, a wider set of skills required to reach his listeners on personal levels, and a continuation in his growth as both a lyricist, vocalist, and producer.

Testing takes all of Rocky’s career risks and strokes of creative innovation into account and drops on them a far more apparent and bold line of experimentation not only lyrically and vocally, but predominantly in its production. 

Testing is here not only to change hip-hop’s course as each of Rocky’s previous projects has; it is here to change its entire sonic landscape. Fitting to its title, Testing puts into practice many controversial and experimental ideas that have not yet otherwise successfully worked their ways into mainstream hip-hop from the undergrounds of each of music’s stylistic expanses. Undertone, oftentimes muted vocals drive a dark sense of emotion and a feeling of unanswered question into the project’s lyricism. Much of the project thus feels impressionistic. A sense of auditory blank space highlights the complex minimalism behind Testing’s every track. A series of 80’s-inspired synthwave techniques from retro game influence to hyper-repetitive synth strokes lends it an air of electronic respectability. 

These are only three examples. There are dozens.

At the end of the day, what may be most impressive is not necessarily that A$AP is so violently searching to unearth hip-hop’s future sounds, but that he is seemingly carrying with him the rest of the game on his shoulders. Testing is essentially a group project thanks to the vast variety of features that lend their unique style to Rocky’s thorough retro-futuristic vision. His influence therefore extends far beyond his already massive reach, and into the realms of all his friends and collaborators. And in that way – in the respect and influence that all of music finds in A$AP Rocky, Testing, aside from being simply a defining moment to Rocky personally in on hip-hop’s modern aesthetic, may just come to be a great project whose influence continues for generations.