How Marcus Aurelius and A$AP Rocky Changed My Life

I got into A$AP Rocky just slightly before I got into Marcus Auerilus. My interest in both of these idols was driven by my failure along a preset career path. While Marcus Auerilus taught me the importance and meaning of virtue, principal, and emotional self discipline, A$AP Rocky stood in stylish juxtaposition as the ostentatious, progressive, paradigm shifting, vice indulging playboy that rose up from one of the most tragic stories in modern hiphop, to become one of the most influential brands in culture.

Peso — Live.Love.ASAP

“I be that pretty mothafucka, Harlem’s what I’m reppin’

Tell my niggas quit the bitchin’, we gon’ make it in a second

Never disrespected plus I’m well connected

With this coke that I imported, just important as your President

Swagger so impressive and I don’t need a necklace

But these bitches get impressed when you pull up in that 7

Them 6’s, them Benzes, I gets get the freshest

Raf Simons, Rick Owens usually what I’m dressed in”

This was the first A$AP Rocky verse that I remember hearing, and one that I think a lot of fans will recognize as simply iconic. Your first reaction is “who the hell is this guy?!” Not only was it unusual for someone who claims he is repping Harlem to have a much more southern sounding flow, but the unique audaciousness of calling himself “*that pretty mothafucka” *while name-dropping high fashion brands few had heard of before was captivating. It’s fresh. There’s something about his cockyness that, when paired with his unique, eclectic taste in art, becomes curiously charismatic instead of classical hip hop douchebaggery. You can tell that this newer generation of rappers have inherited his attention to clothes in order to give off the same vibe, but none have been able to do it really like Rocky

When you’ve been somewhat socially invisible for most of your school life growing up, never really part of the popular kids’ squad, or receiving much attention from crushes, you can’t help but fantasize announcing yourself to the world like that. You want to be the type of person that can. I doubt Rocky’s experience was quite like that, but he’s always considered himself an outsider to the world of hip hop, and while his fashion sense is cool now, it’s something that he and his friends used to get attacked for growing up. Through this, Rocky became a symbol for confidence that a lot of young men, including myself, drew their inspiration from.

Later, when he debuted his music video for Purple Swag, near the end you see an alternate clip for the verse above that features him riding through Harlem in these striking Jeremy Scott x Adidas Wings shoes. That was the first piece of fashion that really made me go “oh, shit.” All of this combined with his catchy, cocky, Houston-inspired flow, his persona stood in fresh contrast to the other two rising stars of the time: Kendrick Lamar and Drake. He simply exuded cool. As I’m grappling with this question of identity and authenticity, here stood a guy that was aggressively independent in representing who he was through his art. I was hooked.

L$D — At.Long.Last.A$AP

“I know I dream about her all day

I think about her with her clothes off

I’m ridin’ ‘round with my system pumpin’ LSD

I look for ways to say, “I love you”

But I ain’t into makin’ love songs

Baby, I’m just rappin’ to this LSD

She ain’t a stranger to the city life

I introduce her to this hippie life

We make love under pretty lights, LSD (Acid)

I get a feelin’ it’s a trippy night

Them other drugs just don’t fit me right

Girl, I really fuckin’ want love, sex, dream

Another quarter to the face system

Make no mistakes, it’s all a leap of faith for love

It takes a place in feelin’ that you crave doin’ love, sex, dreams”

L$D was a fantastical example of At.Long.Last.A$AP’s departure from Rocky’s typical boastful, promethazine inspired, laid back vibe. While a lot of songs in this album show Rocky’s maturation as an artist in their own unique way, this song introduced an homage to something rarely seen in hip hop. It’s devoted to LSD!! He’s rapping about living a hippy life, accompanied by an appropriately trippy video attempting to visually mimic the experience of dropping acid — something I’d never seen a hip hop artist try to do. I vibed with it hard. It was a representation of a lifestyle I drew inspiration from already through original Silicon Valley pioneers, but now it was something I could use to connect totally different aspects of my life. This song even ended up being part of my Mr. Business music video!

As Rocky explored his artistic abilities in cinematography, his music videos started to feel like movies into themselves. The setting for his music video took place in urban Japan with a Japanese Fashion designer — giving a nod to the cult classic psychedelic film, Enter The Void. He somehow was able to bridge these two incredibly different cultures — symbolic of his unique approach to art in general.

Fashion Killa — Long.Live.A$AP

“I said, I see your Jil Sanders, Oliver Peoples (Uh, yeah)

Costume National, your Ann Demeuelemeester (Alright, uh)

See Visvim be the sneaker, Lanvin or Balmain (Uh)

Goyard by the trunk, her Isabel Marant (Uh, oh, yeah)

I love your Linda Farrow, I adore your Dior (Oh, oh, oh)

Your Damir Doma, Vena Cava from the store

I crush down with that top down, bossy see how I ride ‘round (Yeah)

Mami in that Tom Ford, Papi in that Thom Browne (Uh)

Rick Owens, Raf Simons, boy, she got it by the stock (Uh)

She ball until she fall, that means she shop ’til she drop (Uh)

And Versace: got a lot, but she may never wear it

But she save it so our babies will be flyer than their parents”

I get told by old friends how I’ve changed a lot since they’ve known me in high school. I’m never totally sure what they mean precisely, but one thing I’ve actively tried to do is push my own personal bar with fashion.

Before I moved to San Ramon in 8th grade, I was moving almost every year or two between different cities, states, and countries. As other immigrants can probably relate with, each time I moved I had to reconstruct who I was among a totally different group of people and sometimes in a completely different culture. This experience was foundational. Among the different ways it influenced me, it made me very aware of the way people perceived me and the way I was presenting myself. Before anything else, the first impression people had of me was visual — how I looked. On my first day of class at a new school, I had my mom work with me to pick out the dopest clothes I could wear so I could look cool from the first impression. It didn’t really work much, but it began my long relationship with the meaning of style and the art of fashion.

Fashion is particularly interesting to me as an art form because what you wear gives an impression of who you are, whether you intend for it to or not. It’s an art you have to participate in. For people that are actively into fashion, when you wear a designer’s clothes, you wear their art, advertise it to the world, and become part of the vision of the designer. It is this really cool, strangely intimate, yet public relationship.

Fashion for me is the first creative form with which I explored my own authenticity. I had kinda let go of fashion in my late highschool/early college life, oddly enough around the same time I had let go of the ambitions I had held onto as a kid. When I rediscovered fashion, I was in parallel rediscovering who I wanted to be. This song was hugely influential in reigniting my passion for fashion (lol) and I remember tearing through every verse, googling the designers Rocky was mentioning, learning about each one of their backstories, and really diving deep into a world I had only gently explored.

As I started buying new clothes, testing new styles, challenging what was appropriate, I started feeling way better. Way more like myself. While I’ve sold most of the designer things I used to own to fund this new phase in my life, I still try to make sure that everyday when I go out, what I am wearing matches how I am feeling. I operate better that way.

Rocky’s latest studio release album was called TESTING, and while there is no specific verse I want to dive into, the ethos behind the album is incredibly reflective of why I admire Rocky as a person — beyond just an artist.

TESTING was the first album Rocky dropped without the influence of one of his best friends, A$AP Yams, who died in 2015 due to drug complications. Prior to TESTING, Yams had been crucial in curating Rocky’s different sounds, and without him, Rocky has had to rediscover his creative musical compass. TESTING is him doing exactly that. While it didn’t get much acclaim from critics and never got much time on the radio, I loved the growth it showed about Rocky as an artist.

Through his career, Rocky has constantly tested what it means to be a rapper, or more broadly, an artist. He was among the first to reject homophobia in hip hop through his experience interacting with gay designers that inspired him, he spoke up against the double standard woman have to face in our society, he refused to talk about the BLM movement because he didn’t feel like he had an honest perspective on it, he denied being called a designer because he didn’t want to insult the culture of fashion, he’s been an active proponent of psychedelics and their positive influence on creativity, he’s a vegan, and he actively rejects all sources negativity. All of this coming from a man who lost his elder brother to gang violence, his dad to illness, his sister to drugs, struggled with homelessness as a child, and sold crack in the Bronx to support himself.

While he never became as big as Kendrick and Drake in music, he became the number one most iconic fashion influencer, he modeled for Dior, he started a creative consulting group called AWGE, started his own clothing line, he spoke at Oxford about art and authenticity, he consulted with Mercedes Benz, and spoke on stage at SXSW. It’s incredible who he has become from where he started. He has no beef with any other artist and nobody really has anything bad to say about him. During this entire journey, he has never abandoned his friends and has always made sure to give them the opportunity to artistically shine by paving the path for them — as we’ve seen with A$AP Ferg’s come up. He even supported A$AP Yam’s mom when he passed away and brought her as his date to the 2016 Grammys. All around just a superb, truly individualistic, one in a billion person. That’s why I admire him so much.

One place where I went wrong was trying too hard to be him. Because to me he is emblematic of the authentic, young disruptor, exactly the sort of archetype I aspire to, I lost some of who I was by trying to totally be him. The tech equivalent is trying to be like Steve Jobs by starting a new computer hardware company and wearing a black turtleneck with blue jeans everyday. Imitation is a poor understanding of the lessons our idols have to teach us. Greater truth is found by exploring the principles upon which creatives we look up to were able to explore their world with, and applying the most relatable ones to our world today.

I can never be what Rocky is to the world of music and fashion, but I can try to bring his interdisciplinary principles to the world of technology. The world in which I play. I can be inspired by his intense sense for individuality, and authenticity as the highest principles a creator can aspire towards. Sometimes I don’t know if I’m smart or just lucky, if I’m creative or just a regurgitating hack, but as Rocky would say, sometimes you just gotta fuck the negativity and create!

Marcus Auerlius and A$AP Rocky, two figures that could not be more different from each other, yet so inspirational. I hope this two part series two years apart was somewhat interesting and insightful for others going through the same phase as I am.