A$AP Rocky’s biggest strength is his lack of fidelity to any one genre, technique, or even song structure. It’s a truth that stretches back to his earliest work, when he combined the swangin’ and bangin’ of Houston rap culture with a Harlemite nomenclature that helped define his run during the blog era’s midlife.
His new album Don’t Be Dumb takes that cross-pollination even further, chopping and screwing paranoia-soaked raps alongside boy-band-leaning love songs, with a bit of chop-suey rock frolic thrown in for good measure.
Don’t Be Dumb will likely be as divisive among Rocky fans as the album itself. Divergence is both its greatest strength and its most strained attribute. But what’s most fascinating to me, despite the massive sonic leaps inspired by artists ranging from Pimp C to Playboi Carti, are the emotional revelations A$AP exudes in his 15th year of stardom.
The first and most prevalent tone here is paranoia. If anyone wonders what kind of emotional state a person might inhabit while facing the possibility of prison, look no further than tracks like Order of Protection or the Interrogation skit.
In these moments, Rocky not only warns haters and opps about the stick he carries, but also reminds his audience that when it comes to being pretty, rich, creative, and adored, Rocky is still that guy.
But it’s the repetition of these reminders that’s most striking. The first chunk of the album features outros of A$AP angrily going at internet trolls (Helicopters and Playa), snitches (Stop Snitching), Mr. Me Too’s (Interrogation), and, of course, Drake (Stole Ya Flow).
He’s been holding onto this frustration for a minute, after, as he puts it, “a couple of trials, a couple of leaks.” And it’s clear he’s seen all the loud talking.
Even more, I think this insecurity and the desire not just to antagonize the haters but to self-aggrandize in this way reveals the angst that comes with the possibility of going away. Incarceration, or even the prospect of being pinched, can elicit extreme responses. Constantly repeating himself the way Rocky does early on feels like a method of pulling us deeper into his psyche.
The other side of Don’t Be Dumb is rooted in appreciation for his partner and further experimentation with traditional rock-star aesthetics. On Playa, he castigates internet heads for assuming he isn’t a loyal partner, revealing a new level of maturity and perspective.
Rocky argues that loyalty is the new hot shit, that it’s actually “Playa” to take care of your kids and be a faithful husband. It feels like a pivot in some ways, but one that’s fitting for a nearly 40-year-old father and husband. It’s kinda fire to see A$AP embrace responsibility like this.
Still, there’s no doubt that Father Flacko is down for frivolity. The back half of Don’t Be Dumb is all about rocking out in the adroit styles of Uzi, Carti, and Teezo. Tracks like STFU, Punk Rocky, and Air Force showcase the artist’s dexterity and willingness to dive into different genres, a trait most notably displayed on his previous album, Testing.
Here, though, he fully embraces the guitars and loud, banging drums with confidence and a clear reverence for the new waves in hip-hop. He balances that intensity with moments of melancholy on tracks like Whiskey, where a feature from Damon Albarn, of Gorillaz fame, melds gently with Rocky’s conversational singing style, resulting in one of the most heartfelt records in his entire discography.
All of it is fascinating. There will be fans who believe A$AP stretched himself too thin, that he should have stayed in one pocket. But I wouldn’t necessarily think of those people as fans. He has always stretched, experimented, and diverged from the norm. That is his charm.
Don’t Be Dumb works in 2026 because the attributes that once defined rap, and made it feel somewhat static in the early 2010s, are no longer hard-and-fast rules. And even when they were, A$AP Rocky was breaking them.
It does feel, at times, like this go-round he’s playing a bit of catch-up. But at the heart of it all, the genre-bending, landscape-spanning braggadocio is still inherently A$AP. And it’s good to have him back.
