Illustration by Meaghan Garvey
Steven Rodriguez, better known as Eastside Stevie or A$AP Yams, was a brash, larger-than-life presence in the hip-hop world. Though invariably compared with Murder Inc.'s Irv Gotti and Roc-A-Fella's Damon Dash, both of whom he idolized, 26-year-old Yams' career was still on the ascent when the heartbreaking news of his passing broke this weekend. (Rumors are he'd just landed a major A&R position with Sony.)
To those of us who followed him for years, though, he was much more than an aspiring mogul. He had to be—after all, he came of age in a radically different era than Irv or Dame. On social media, in writing, and through interviews, he was a living repository of hip-hop history, an enthusiastic tastemaker, a businessman, a brand, and an assured comic personality. Short and stocky with a paint-splatter birthmark on his right cheek, he was a distinctive presence in every A$AP Mob photograph and video. But he also played a public-facing role online before anyone knew who A$AP Rocky was. It enabled him to parlay his established platform, the now-defunct RealNiggaTumblr, into the launching pad for a group of kids from Harlem to become international stars. But more than anything, he was an obsessive hip-hop fan, one with a generous spirit, someone whose every move was for his friends and the culture to which he'd devoted his life.
-=-=-=-There wasn't a space for what he did, so he created one. He wasn't a rapper, but for the A$AP Mob, he was the group's aesthetic and spiritual center. He was not a rap journalist, unapologetically putting his friends on; yet to many bloggers and writers, who saw in his demeanor a glamor that eludes the profession's daily realities, he was idolized for his success as a writer and tastemaker. (It was not uncommon for harsher critics to remain indifferent to Rocky's music yet unabashedly celebrate Yams.) And while he made inroads in the industry, he was not really an insider, either. ("I feel for Keef right now because we went through the same shit. The whole industry coming for you at one time," he confided to me in 2012. "I just hope he has someone who can direct him to the right lawyers and higher ups cuz most of these labels are terrible.") As he rose, he kept his ear to the streets as the industry moved in the opposite direction.
It was all unfolding according to plan, Yams himself had suggested, as if he were 19 steps ahead. When he was in 10th grade, Karen Civil arranged an unpaid internship with Dipset for him; he quit high school, watching from the background as Jim Jones became an A&R for Warner Brothers. Yams attended the Borough of Manhattan Community College briefly but spent his student loan money on gold teeth. In 2007, he formed the A$AP Mob with Bari and Illz, a year before meeting Rocky. On his Tumblr page he ran the long con, attracting a large and influential audience with a mix of images, amusing commentary, and a trend-conscious tastes; when he posted Rocky's music, he did so as an interested outsider, only later revealing his own involvement with the carefully-packaged project.
This brazen ploy was startlingly effective; Yams' charismatic online presence propelled Rocky into the press, which was sold on the Harlem rapper's unconventional blend of hip-hop history, Harlem swag, Houston accents, and high fashion. The videos for "Purple Swag" and "Peso" became viral sensations in a short period, helping transform an unknown rapper into the genre's most-discussed new star. Not that Yams was responsible for their every move; he has credited Rocky with the "Peso" video's characteristic attention to detail. But everything the Mob did went through Yams regardless.
In interviews, Yams has always spoken of his success as if it was part of a wider strategy, even when talking about the creation of his Tumblr. "I’ma bite Up North Trips, I’ma take the Dirty Glove content and I’ma mix it with Noz’s whole writing style," he explained. (Up North Trips is a Tumblr full of '90s rap mag scans and ephemera; Dirty Glove Bastard is a blog focusing on posting street rap, especially from the South; and Pitchfork contributor Andrew Noz is the widely respected rap journalist behind the blog CocaineBlunts.)
This formulation is funny, and not entirely inaccurate, but it is imprecise. Yams liked to speak cynically, as if the grand narrative of his success were mapped out with tremendous forethought. But to anyone who knew him, his success seemed more a side effect of his tremendous personality than a carefully plotted scheme. On his Tumblr page he did post old magazine scans, mixtapes from the late '90s, random hip-hop trivia, and up-and-coming artists. He was often funny, and could be brutally honest in his assessments of artists. But even in his critical moments, he seemed bemused by the music's quirks. In a sardonic post about the Dogg Pound, the Lost Boyz, and Canibus' "Music Makes Me High" remix video, he commented:
He had an overwhelming, manic passion for every piece of hip-hop, for its very texture—not a dilettante's interest in its high watermarks, nor an entrepreneur's excitement for its most popular manifestations. From the perspective of capitalism, Yams' appreciation for hip-hop came with a lot of wasted motion.
This is because above all, A$AP Yams was an effusive, obsessive hip-hop fan. It wasn't just lyrical science, tough beats, or classic albums that made hip-hop what it was. It was about the ineffable gestures, the culture's very fabric that brought rap music to life. The attitudes, clothes, slang, images, and stories; the album tracks, mixtapes, and street DVDs. It was a reservoir of survival tactics: "Don’t judge a rap by it’s lyricism or any of that," he once said on his Tumblr. "Judge it by how much game you gettin from it. That’s what really makes a rap good or bad in my opinion." And this holistic love of the game's core essence, his zeal for both the mythos and the marginal, was a part of his every exuberant move, online and off.
