A$AP Rocky

Photo by John Anderson

A$AP Rocky

Bad things are bound to happen when you're three songs into your set and you haven't yet noticed that the backing track's vocals are louder than anything you're putting through your microphone. For A$AP Rocky, Harlem's heralded Houston biter, that messed-up equilibrium pushed his headlining set straight to irrelevancy from the start. There was "Purple Swag," "Goldie," and a slew of other tracks from his as-yet-unreleased LongLiveA$AP, but the lasting impression of A$AP Rocky's set was a herd of A$AP mobbers jumping out onto the stage amidst a cloud of smoke, then Detroit ringer Danny Brown rapping 16 bars unannounced and (almost) unseen. It was all unremarkable, faded lyrics spliced between throbbing bass lines and more than enough of those Jamaican-powered horns. That made Rocky's numerical slipup at the end even more ironic. "Make some noise if you're having a good time," he shouted, eliciting a few yelps. "Yeah, that makes two of us."