I don’t think “Tumblr Rap” is the most apt descriptor. “Facebook Rap” seems more appropriate given that his identity is constructed like an FB info section. I’m sure there’s a grad school paper being written on this somewhere, but even though authenticity in rap is a murky subject, outside The Game I don’t think i’ve ever seen it performed with such an extreme level of superficially associative validation before.
The reason why it might be called Tumblr rap is that in a way it’s a litmus test of sorts for anyone who graduated from the mediafire school of rap education. RAPidshare 101, if you will.* Tumblr, in the way it allows reblogs and song posts without tags to embellish insider “know it or get lost” authority on a variety of subjects, is kind of the ideal territory for ASAP to operate in. LiveloveA$AP, in turn, functions like a GRE test that measures how well the signifiers have been composted, and is thus like comfort food for anyone who listens to rap like it’s a checklist.
Maybe even “model” rap would work in the way its worn, like the aesthetic is the opposite of couture-level flow, it’s bargain-basement flow, always going on sale. He’s from Harlem but spends “Palace” name-checking southern rap outposts which would be a boundary-shattering, post-Ghostface drawbridge had Biggie never said “I’m not from Houston but I Rap-A-Lot” or Big Pimpin’ was never made. The extended use of screwed vocals recalls less the codeine-indebted southern signature than it does Salem’s haphazard application of it. Like Salem there’s almost an acknowledgement that ASAP is not a particularly compelling rapper. Don’t get me wrong, the tape sounds awesome, but like Jawnita pointed out, that’s mostly thanks to Clams Casino and a few other producers.
To be obnoxious for a second, I’m reading Sahar Khalifeh’s Wild Thorns in class** and its subject, a Palestinian named Usama returning to the territories on a mission to blow up “sell-out” worker buses headed for jobs inside Israel, seems kind of applicable. Usama, in order to motivate his action, drapes his identity in superficial references to Pablo Neruda and Che Guevara, increasingly at the expense of grounded Palestinian voices that haven’t been in exile two years. ASAP, too, seems ingrained in the idea of rap more than he does in actually rapping.***
*like me!
**Gotta put that learning to some use!
***at least when K.R.I.T. does this he a) can actually rap and b) is less concerned with posturing than with signifiers as up from the muck, working class affirmation of sorts
