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. However, he had nothing but time, so he sat in his cell and sketched away. 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.
His professional career has also been marked by a mix of triumph and heartbreak. Rocky has learned to wear his scars well. In fact, he bears two actual scars on his otherwise flawless face: The tiny one on his left cheek is the result of a fight from when he was When asked how he got the scar, he often made up stories, like falling off his scooter or being slapped by an auntie with long nails, but in Swedish court, when explaining why he has a security detail, Rocky mentioned he had been slashed the previous year.
Sweden represented the pinnacle of shit happening, but Rocky took his overnight transformation from adored entertainer to prisoner with remarkable ease. After a three-day trial, he was released pending a verdict. He was eventually found guilty and given a two-year conditional sentence that imposed no further jail time. The trial featured an unlikely guest at the behest of Trump: one of the administration's top hostage envoys, who was otherwise tasked with freeing Americans held in places like Afghanistan and Syria.
But Rocky thinks Trump's involvement was a sideshow that could have easily become detrimental. He didn't help—he made efforts and he rooted for me to come home, but he didn't free me. In the ensuing weeks, allies of the president started complaining that Rocky didn't deliver a public statement of gratitude. Despite his perceived silence, and his fears that he'd be punished due to Trump's ham-fisted Twitter diplomacy, Rocky was indeed grateful.
He told the president so on a private phone call. You can get lost, and you feel soulless. Like, you feel low, bro. When Rocky got out, he flew home to L.
So they got to work. The likes of Schoolboy Q and Lil Yachty agreed. Rocky, on the other hand, stayed away for all of four months after his release.
In December he returned to Stockholm, intending to perform for the inmates at the jail he was previously housed in. After being rebuffed by the authorities, he had to settle for an arena show that people from the city's immigrant neighborhoods could attend for free. When I ask if he'd be down to go back to Sweden on his next tour, Rocky scoffs. When we meet at a rooftop bar in West Hollywood on a sunny afternoon in April, pandemic restrictions are starting to loosen and Rocky has just returned to L.
He's spent the past year or so mostly out of the public eye, but his style—today he's in an AWGE x Needles track jacket, Kapital Kountry jeans, Nike Dunks, and a pearl-studded belt he found at a tiny shop on Ludlow Street in New York City—is as prominent as ever.
A vintage Esso trucker hat covers his short braids, and when he smiles, as he does often, he flashes a gold cap on a canine that's emblazoned with a tooth-size Mickey Mouse.
A waiter, not recognizing Rocky, asks him if he's a rock star. He's had a place in L. He carried himself like a rock star back then too: He certainly partied like one, and he looked like one, with a Hendrix-like slinkiness and a taste for the avant-garde fashion worlds of Rick Owens and Raf Simons. His musical output was similarly curated. Though today hip-hop is a post-regional genre, at the time Rocky was a radical and controversial artist for the way, under Yams's guidance, he mixed sounds and styles from New York and down south.
Atlanta and Houston were hot. New York's hip-hop scene was tepid. Rakim Mayers set things on fire. Even when he's in L. He has a Ferrari and two Mercedes, but he prefers walking, taking Ubers, and riding an e-bike.
He spins around his neighborhood to relax, to clear his mind, to see what people are wearing. In NYC, all he has to do to see what styles are popping in the streets is step outside; in L. Rocky's lockdown year was spent seeking out something even more important: himself. New-world shit. His dream blunt rotation?
It's over. Change, Rocky is saying, is good. In his love life, though, the change Rocky has experienced is drastic. It's change in the same way that a Mega Millions lottery winner experiences change. Rocky knows he probably shouldn't talk about Rihanna, the triple-A-list pop star, wildly successful fashion and beauty entrepreneur, and Category 5 cultural hurricane, but he can't help himself.
As soon as I bring her up, he starts beaming like a teenager whose crush just accepted his prom invite. I could practically hear the angels singing. The exact timeline of their relationship is uncertain, and Rocky won't divulge many details. Rumors about their status began circulating as early as , when Rocky opened for Rihanna's Diamonds World Tour.
You can see why the global pop culture apparatus and the duo's combined hundred million fans—most of them hers, to be fair—have been attempting to speak their union into existence. They're both insanely hot. They've both got culture-shifting side hustles. They're both fashion oracles. Their coupling feels predestined. She amounts to probably, like, a million of the other ones.
She's the One. Around Christmas last year, Rocky was photographed with Rihanna in Barbados, where Rocky—whose father emigrated from Barbados to the U.
I always imagined what it would be like for my dad, before he came to America. And I got to visit those places, and believe it or not, there was something nostalgic about it. It was foreign but familiar. I would have a very fly child. But Rocky lives to tour. So last summer, for the first time together since , Rocky and Rihanna went on a tour of sorts.
The couple commandeered a massive tour bus and drove from L. Instead, they threw themselves into the tradition of the Great American Road Trip. They stopped in a few national parks.
Rocky dropped acid and made his own clothes, beatnik-style—sewing, patching, and tie-dyeing shirts and pants on the bus. When I ask Rocky whom he met while on the road, he takes a moment to think. One can understand why: Not since Sweden had Rocky had this much time for himself.
And he'd never been able to be so free and unburdened while with his lady. He says he's over working in proper recording studios, which he considers too big and boring. On the road, he had a mobile setup so he could make music as inspiration struck. Rocky's growth as an artist in the past decade has been all about chasing new sounds, often by working with unexpected collaborators and occasionally at the expense of fans who think a Harlem MC named after Rakim should be rapping over rap beats.
After two albums that reached No. But rather than resorting to calling up the surefire producers of the moment and pursuing what people supposedly want right now, Rocky's resolve to continue confounding expectations has only increased in the ensuing years. You got that catalog. You can go revisit that. I just want to make some good music, that's all. I want to feel great about doing it, and I want people to feel great about hearing it.
Two new important creative partners are likely to be found on All Smiles. The first is Morrissey. Rocky, it turns out, is a huge fan, and he's been working remotely with the Pope of Mope over the past year. It was a hallmark moment for the country crooner, who came out as gay earlier this year! Elton John has no doubt been a member of many exclusive clubs over the decades, but probably nothing quite as exclusive as the one he formally joined on Wednesday.
In an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle, Prince Charles anointed the musician and charity patron as a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour. It is one of the highest awards that can be bestowed by Charles' mother, Queen Elizabeth II, to citizens in Britain and across the Commonwealth.
These songs really make the Yuletide gay. The singer, who's opened up about her past struggles with substance abuse, recently celebrated four years of sobriety. Programme airs on Sunday 14 November. Genesis kicks off its first U. After being with Sony Music since the beginning of his career, John Legend has signed with Republic Records, with his debut for his new label due next year and a holiday single coming out this week. Billboard broke the news.
As country music's biggest stars prepared to celebrate the annual CMA Awards, a group of artists, academics and historians gathered to correct the record on the genre's past and offer ideas on how it can expand outside its typical white lines.
Just steps from the show's home at Bridgestone Arena, speakers addressed the erasure of Black artists from country music's history and whether the industry could be more welcoming to artists of color. Dubbed the Rosedale Summit and held Monday simultaneously in Nashville at the National Museum of African American Musi c and the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, it was a timely event acknowledging the genre's recent struggles to address race within its ranks.
The bachata track, the first single off her forthcoming album Motomami due next year, officially dropped today Nov. Jershika Maple was in the Top 2 on John Legend's team, earning her a spot in the final With nearly 70 bands on the bill, there are plenty of choices at this week's Welcome to Rockville, but here are five acts worth catching. Little Mix members Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Jade Thirlwall and Perrie Edwards have addressed split rumours for the first time, following their year anniversary.
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