This whole album era really was the apex of the A$AP movement imo

first verse is beautiful

Also this was the album Rocky started producing on

the ferg adlibs all over ALLA while not giving him a verse on anything is also kinda hilarious

(Alright!)

this album was that post mbdtf—>post GKMC ripple where it felt like every mainstream rapper was genuinely trying to deliver their best album, was such a great first listen for me, only reasons I can come up with for this album being underrated in terms of acclaim/reception is no one expecting him to deliver something relatively introspective + the uk trip hop influence could make the pacing feel slow for some

Not having a Ferg feature and no Clams beats were the biggest sins of the album

Made me think he droppin this himself smh

This Week's Project:

A puzzling release overall as Rocky attempts to experiment leading to mixed results. Not in love with this album like I am with his first three projects, but some of the songs on here are some of my favorite Rocky songs ever

has some of his best and worst songs of his career

First five tracks on here are an incredible stretch

This album is so frustrating because it goes from career-highs like Praise the Lord to one of the worst songs of the 21st Century in CALLDROPS

Fukk sleep is goated

Such a really good album. I’m glad he got dean blunt on the team. I was listening to the last quarter of this again the other day and.. man

A few cool things I noted ppl never mention

Praise the lord was made while rocky and Skepta were on psychedelics and were observed by a college professor during the process p cool

About the involvement of Kanye he said Kanye “turned the hotel we were staying at into a Yeezy compound… He was designing sneakers in one suite, making music in one suite, and I was making music in my suite. It was crazy. We shut down the whole hotel

the album in general is def his most personal and vulnerable but esp the last quarter is almost exclusively rocky talking about himself and his life.

Buckshots is about growing up in a Broken environment and home kinda, purity is about the loss of his loved ones and feeling like a crash dummy with how god takes away the life of people close to him every time he drops music to the point he’s scared to drop, call drops p clearly reflects guilt and where he could’ve been, the album throughout has a running theme of home come up and adaptation which makes sense with the whole idea of a transition record

It has maybe one of my favourite visual aesthetics of a rap album ever. Here’s the photography collection of the testing photoshoot:
israelriqueros.com/asap-rocky-testing

Changes is one of the few songs I think is jsut way too slow even with its great ideas. The last part hits differently now that he has children tbh

People involved in the process: Dean blunt, Kanye west, hector delgado, kelvin krash, frank, Tyler, clams, MGMT, blood orange, fka twigs, skepta, nez & Rio

i love testing

BUCKSHOT

the best videos of his career one of the best visual directions I’ve seen for a project in general tbh

top 3

If there’s one thing that the Testing era gave us, it was his perfecting of the music video. All of his videos have been on another level since then

changes is top 5 rocky songs

My favorite rocky project idc. Super minority opinion but i think this record is misunderstood/underappreciated