A$AP Rocky's Guide to Harlem

Reflections on dice games, nutcrackers, and fox furs.

January 24, 2012

Complex Original

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It is A$AP Rocky's time, and in this way it is New York's time again—one of the most talked about young rappers out is a New Yorker. Though his music evokes a heritage rich in other places—the screwed sound out of Houston, a sometime singsongy flow Cleveland's Bone Thugs-N-Harmony seem the antecedent for—Rocky (our latest cover star) is from one place. He's from Harlem. This fact will not change as his career continues, even as he continues to make other sounds his own.

Harlem is a world unto itself, with a storied, evocative culture that has been endlessly discussed and valorized. The Harlem Renaissance. The Apollo. Harlem World. Here are the facets that affected Rocky as he came up, that continue to affect him now.

From dice games to nutcrackers, fox furs to catfish, this is A$AP Rocky's Guide to Harlem.

As told to Ross Scarano (@RossScarano)

Tradition

"You know they call it Harlem World, right? There's a reason for that. They move at they own time because the world revolves around Harlem. That place gave me the confidence I have that everybody loves me for. I'm overly confident.

"To see it, you gotta go back to the Harlem Renaissance. Out of all black people [in New York City] the only place they was making money was Uptown. Harlem. Even back then. You had your fox furs, your minks, the taps and toms and oxford shoes. They were pretty sharp. Pizzazz. That tradition has stuck with us."

Shopping & Style

"When I was 11, I used to shop up on 125th Street in Harlem. I'd go with my mom most of the time. If not [her], my grandmom. My dad would give me some money and I could go by myself or with my friends. Back then, I was one of those guys that stayed on top of the new shit early. I would know, 'Oh, this is gonna be the next big thing in six months, so let me get on it now while the getting is good.'

"I'm from Harlem, the fox furs and all that, but honestly I've got my own style. I'm not gonna just brand it like 'Oh, that's Rocky's style,' but I have something of my own. There aren't too many people with a fashion sense that's keen like mine. So you know we are the trend setters, and the kids our age are dressing like how we dress. But honestly, I have a problem with just following everything that's supposed to be popular, and the thing to do. I don't like doing things just 'cause that's the thing to do, you know? Fuck that. This is that rebel life."

Amy Ruth's

"When I'm hungry in Harlem, I go to this place called Amy Ruth's (113 West 116 Street). Before I became a pescetarian, I used to order chicken wings, collard greens, motherfucking fried rice, white rice with the gravy. Soul food. Some catfish. What you know about the catfish?

"I became a pescetarian a few months back. I started doing research and found out how they treat those animals before they, you know, service them. They inject them with steroids and drugs that enhance their growth. None of that shit is healthy, and on top of that those fucking animals were stressed and compressed the whole time. That kind of food going into your body is unhealthy. I don't mean to sound like some weirdo, but it is what it is.

"But in Harlem, I got some fish options."

Jimbo's

"I don't go here anymore because I'm on some pescetarian shit, but we shot part of the 'Peso' video in Jimbo's (535 Lenox Avenue). It's real Harlem shit. For the video, we shut down Jimbo's. They locked the doors. We were in there with forties, motherfuckers rolling dice, wildin' out. Next thing we knew, some guy came to the door, like [Speaking in a lower register] 'Yo, what y'all doing? Y'all shooting a movie or something?' And then everybody was like, 'Get the fuck outta here!' We started wilding on this dude, this diesel gangsta mafia fake wannabe black pimp ass nigga. 'Yo, this my block. Why ain't y'all tell me y'all shooting a video?' Get the fuck outta here."

Nutcrackers

"In the 'Peso' video, you see me on the roof, holding a nutcracker. That's the drink in Harlem. In the summer, people make a lot of money selling those. They cost $5. What they do is they take sliced fruits, put them at the bottom of the nutcracker, and then the fruits absorb the liquor. It's like some cocktail shit, pretty wavy.

"What I like about nutcrackers is I always score with the chicks when I'm drunk off them. Always. Gives you that 'I don't give a fuck' confidence.

"I don't know what's in them because everyone makes them differently. But I do know if anybody comes up to you saying the shit got lean or anything else in it, smack the shit out of them. First of all, if you mix lean with liquor you can die. If you sip lean period you can die, but if you mix it with liquor you asking to die. Who the fuck would mix fucking prescribed medicines with alcohol?

"One time I was down on Rivington Street in LES. This fucking guy comes up to me with two bottles and he's like, 'I got that lean.' And I'm like, 'What kind of lean?' And he like, 'This shit kinda weak.' Kinda weak. And he gave me the lean and it was fucking NyQuil."

[Ed. Note—For one example of a nutcracker recipe procured from an anonymous source, check out this piece.]

Dice

"I grew up rolling dice. Sometimes I'd carry 'em around on me because games could happen anywhere. You could be chillin' and somebody starts talking shit like, 'What's in it? I got $20, I got $100, I got $200.' That's how it goes. Like a break dancing battle, it starts with an exchange of words and next thing you know you shakin' dice.

"Most I ever lost was about two grand. But most I ever won was $1,700. I was 15, and at that time I was sellin' crack in the Bronx. We were chilling when this Spanish guy, his name Sam—he was a dope boy used to get a lot of money over there—he always used to challenge me, and sometimes I'd beat him, sometimes he'd beat me. But that night was a good night for me. I'd made a lot of money and he'd made a lot of money, so a game started up. Sam was about 23, 24 years old. A few of my friends were there, a few people from the neighborhood were there. I started poppin' everybody, taking everybody's money. Sam had about $800, $900. I took that from him. I had a really lucky hand that night.

"But I've had bad nights, nights where fucking 14-year-olds would fucking rape me—no homo. [Laughs.] They would rope you. That's what it's called, rope. They rope you on a night when your arm is noodles, when you got nothing in that arm, when you suck."

Hustling

"On my block in Harlem, it was everybody doing the same thing. There wasn't no money. So I went to the Bronx. You know, there's money everywhere, but I had to go where the weed wasn't. I started at 13, selling weed. Probably 15, it was base. And 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, it was weed. Massive, massive amounts of weed.

"It was one of the most stressful...shit is just—you gotta watch your back. You don't know who's upset, you don't know who wants to tell on you, you don't know who wants to kill you. I was never the type to wear ice, so people didn't really have a reason to envy me. Other than my clothes. But then music saved my life."

Harlem vs. Soho

Harlem vs. SoHo

"[What appealed to me about SoHo was] the diversity, the fashion, and the weed. The cool hipster mentality, like, 'Fuck that my sneakers are dirty—I'm still gonna go to this party and I might fuck five bitches just 'cause I party hard.' That shit. That's downtown life. [SoHo is] where the real good parties are. You got Asian and white and Spanish bitches sniffin' coke and shit. You got bitches doing shrooms and drinking forties. It's live. And it's crazy, 'cause that's what we do in Harlem. Well, except for the coke and other shit. But the forties, the weed—that's what we do."

Harlem Now

"Honestly, I'm off in other states right now, doing shows, so I haven't got to sit back and look at how Harlem is reacting. I'm hearing that it's like 'oh my god' right now, but I'm not back home yet. I got these Drake tour dates, I'm working on the album. But I hope that when I get back it's all daps and hugs and smiles."