It couldn’t go more than 90 seconds before ASAP pulled some fourth-wall-breaking stunt and ruined the immersion.
Like the album, the whole set appears half-finished, in development and disjointed a stream of concepts rather than anything resembling a realised stage show. In fact, the flaws of the record are also the flaws of tonight’s performance. At times, ‘TESTING’ is basically an experiment in sonic abrasion, and tracks from that new record come across like sketches rather than actual, structured songs beginning with promising drops and breaks and descending quickly into atonal dirges and non-sensical yelling. This works fine on songs like ‘Fuckin’ Problems’ when he can let loose and get into full flow, but for large portions of tonight’s set, it feels like he can’t quite find his groove. ASAP has never really been about finesse, and tonight he serves up songs both an old and new with typical sledgehammer bluntness. Dressed in a jump suit and accompanied by a giant, monolithic crash test dummy’s head, the set looks like a proving ground for the sound-clash and new sonic territory that Rocky has been working on.Įven if the Harlem rapper has been exploring fresh horizons recently, when it comes to delivery, some things never change. “My new album is really about testing new sounds,” the rapper told GQ earlier this year, and if that were true, then the accompanying stage decoration suits the idea perfectly. One of his first European shows on the back of his new album ‘TESTING’, it’s clear that Rocky is currently in the mid-stages of a career metamorphosis. Taking care of the Saturday night headline slot on the vast SEAT stage, ASAP Rocky brought down the curtain on the 2018 festival with a set that was equal parts intensity, bombast and charisma, yet maddeningly self-indulgent. If Primavera Sound was looking to go out with a bang, then they certainly had the right explosive.
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