Don’t Be Dumb is A$AP Rocky’s first album in eight years, and it seems like he’s been promoting it for nearly as long. (He announced the title in 2022.) In the interim, there’s been a smattering of one-off singles, like 2023’s “Riot (Rowdy Pipe’n)” (with Pharrell Williams) and 2024’s “Tailor Swif,” as well as requisite headlining gigs at sundry Rolling Loud festivals, plus the kind of Discord leaks and seconds-long teasers on Instagram Reels and Twitter/X that typify modern-day marketing. He’s also kept busy with, among other things, various Creative Director gigs, as a partner to Rihanna (with whom he has three children) and as a budding actor in movies like If I Had Legs I’d Kick You and Spike Lee’s 2024 joint, Highest 2 Lowest, where he starred along Denzel Washington.
You have to go back nearly 15 years to uncover a time when the Harlem rapper felt like a fresh, A-list sensation who helped shape the genre. In the early 2010s, he represented what was then called “leaders of the new cool” alongside Kendrick Lamar and Drake, both whom co-starred (with 2 Chainz) on his best-known single, the eight-times platinum 2013 smash “Fuckin’ Problems.” Back then, the biggest knock on A$AP Rocky was that he wasn’t as dynamic as his peers, and tended to deploy the same flashy yet stolid cadence that girded his breakout moment, 2011’s Live.Love.A$AP, a marvel of cloud-rap dynamics and Tumblr logic that remains his most impressive sonic achievement. Yet it’s worth revisiting Long.Live.A$AP, the “official” debut album that followed and on which “Fuckin’ Problems” appeared. Its shifts between muddy atmospherics, EDM dalliances, and the bar-for-bar roundelay “1 Train” have aged quite well. Perhaps a better comparison for A$AP’s style isn’t a rhyme animal like Lamar, but a maximalist visionary like Travis Scott, who also seems more focused on colorful aural vibes than trenchant lyrical exegesis.
Rocky’s adventurous streak ultimately keeps Don’t Be Dumb from turning into an amusing detour between casting calls. It’s slick and overstuffed, from the Tim Burton-designed artwork to cameos from Damon Albarn of Gorillaz and Oscar-winning composer Danny Elfman, among others. Rocky strains to convey his evolution from scrapping on the streets of Harlem to luxuriating in wealthy, starstruck domestic bliss. “My fairytale with a happy ending … Truth is I just got struck by Cupid,” he says on “Stay Here 4 Life,” one of several nods to Rihanna. Too often, he can’t help but lock back into his familiar persona as a “pretty motherfucker,” yielding incessant couplets about his hustler status and sexual prowess, all told with charisma but lacking the kind of linguistic verve that animated past Uptown stars like Cam’ron and Big L. Still, it sounds like he’s having fun, and he eventually convinces the listener to join in as well.
For the rap gossips, there’s “Stole Ya Flow,” where Rocky seems to take shots at former friend Drake. “Stole my flow, so I stole your bitch,” he charges (Drake and Rihanna were once famously romantically involved. Some folks, it’s worth noting, took issue with Rocky calling Rihanna “his bitch.”) Then, on “No Trespassing,” he adds, “I might move to Texas, roll ‘round with protection/Pull up to your section, hit ‘em with that fire.” (Drake reportedly moved to Texas in 2024.)
All this smoke may have gotten tongues wagging, but it’s not the most compelling stuff on Don’t Be Dumb. More interesting is how Rocky feels he’s been underrated as a progenitor of modern rap style. (Skeptics will argue that much of that style was cribbed from cult figures like Lil B and Main Attrakionz as well as Odd Future.) “These boys gon’ finally give me credit for settin’ all these trends,” he claims on “Whiskey,” just before Westside Gunn chimes in, ad-libbing, “boom-boom-boom-boom-boom!” On “Stop Snitchin’,” Rocky references his highly publicized trial and acquittal for allegedly threatening onetime friend A$AP Relli with a gun. “YGs to OGs, stay fuck up off the interviews/You was just on Say Cheese, talkin’ like interrogation room,” he says on the track, which also features embattled Houston rapper Sauce Walka. Collectively, these feel like the testimony of a platinum-certified artist who nevertheless believes he deserves more credit for his artistic achievements than he’s received. As Meek Mill once said, there’s levels to this shit.
Don’t Be Dumb may stumble over grumpy claims about his inherent swagger, but it ultimately fascinates with songs like “STFU,” a hardcore banger where Rocky chants alongside self-described “ghetto metal” Inland Empire band Slay Squad. “Punk Rocky,” an emo collaboration with singer Cristoforo Donadi, hearkens to the slurry hallucinations of Rocky’s 2015 curveball “LSD.” On “Air Force (Black Demarco),” he indulges in crooning reminiscent of Lil Yachty’s shoegaze-y psychedelic trip Let’s Start Here. None of these cuts, except for perhaps “STFU,” retain the heady rawness of Rocky’s protean “Purple Swag” and Live.Love.A$AP heyday. But one can’t help but give in to the zippy “Robbery,” where Rocky and Doechii play like Bonnie and Clyde over a jazzy arrangement of piano and drums (minus that film’s depiction of Clyde as impotent, of course). “I’m the Basquiat Banji, I know you want my Bantu knots in your ‘Cedes,” flexes Doechii.
Don’t Be Dumb winds down with “The End,” a topical assessment of an increasingly gloomy world, with help from Will.i.am. “It’s hard to sing ‘Sunshine, good morning’ with global warming/Newsflash, we at war, a global warning,” raps Rocky before alt-folk singer Jessica Pratt croons, “This is the way the world ends.” Hate on Rocky for being the kind of overconfident talker who never seems to know when to stop bragging. At least he knows that there’s more important issues in the hellscape that is American life in 2026 than whether he’s got beef with the Iceman.
