“I've been locked up,” he says with a shrug when I ask if incarceration was one of his greatest fears. Sweden represented the pinnacle of shit happening, but Rocky took his overnight transformation from adored entertainer to prisoner with remarkable ease. Pearl necklace, $6,500, by Mikimoto x Comme des Garçons. Vintage choker, $75,000, by Cartier from Stephen Russell.
Headpiece (price upon request) by Paco Rabanne. Rocky’s best friend and mentor, A$AP Yams, who cofounded the A$AP Mob crew and pioneered a new kind of very online rap movement, died in 2015 of an accidental overdose. A$AP., but tragedy lurked around the corner.
In 2011, when Rocky was 23, he signed a $3 million major-label deal after dropping his breakout mixtape, Live.
His professional career has also been marked by a mix of triumph and heartbreak. At the age of 16, he spent two weeks in Rikers Island for firing a gun at a neighborhood bully in Harlem, where he grew up. If being stuck in a Swedish jail and suddenly part of Trump’s agenda sounds to you like an unusual position for someone to be in, it wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar scenario to Rocky. However, he had nothing but time, so he sat in his cell and sketched away. He didn't know if the discerning Parisian designer would agree to work with AWGE, Rocky's creative agency that functions as a platform for his fashion projects. He got a pen and paper, which he used to sketch out the idea of a dress that looks imported from a dystopian future: Picture a vintage T-shirt, stretched and elongated, then finished with a kilt-like hem and a Jedi master hood. Rocky had been a fan of Serre's conceptual regenerative streetwear for a few years, and one day in his cell, he began to conceive the outline for a collaboration. Vintage pearl necklace (bottom) by Chanel from Vineyard Vintage. Vintage cross necklace by Cartier from FD Gallery. Pearl necklaces (top), $2,800 and $6,500 (with chain), by Mikimoto x Comme des Garçons. Vintage jeans by Levi’s from Raggedy Threads. Bloody ink on my past spelled suicide, Michael Jackson even passed cuz you scrutinize Fuck illuminati lies, say Im lucified, Baptised in the gutter, motherfucker you decide Cause the ride come with doors that be suicide Or the thighs on my whores, they be super-sized Good and bad happen, wars, nigga chose a side, Now all hail to the Lord like you do to God, Who am I? Lord Flacko, Painting vivid pictures, call me Basquiat Picasso, Capo Head Hancho, now my followins colossal, Aint no boxer Paquiao but got the chopper en todo caso Its like you heard God spoke, Ive seen the ghetto gospel, The choir like my reefer and the preacher got my eyes low, Sister Mary Jane to make me see from singin high notes The bible or the rifle goodnight folks.Blazer, $2,550, by Valentino.