Love Comes With A Price Tag And A Barcode

A$AP Rocky “Changes”

A$AP Rocky has been arty from the start, but early on he had a way of smuggling strange textures and unlikely samples into songs that passed for mainstream rap. His new record Testing goes much further out into experimental territory – there isn’t anything remotely like a banger, several songs resist form and structure, samples and vocals often overlap like clouds rather than click into rhythms, and everything feels like a woozy audio hallucination.

“Changes,” a song built around a sample of Charles Bradley cover’ of Black Sabbath’s ballad of the same name, swaps a standard verse-chorus-verse form in favor of a three-act structure. The first verse is a homage to Andre 3000’s famous verse from “International Players Anthem,” but flips that tentative ode to monogamy into a story about getting rejected and acting out. The narrative shifts along with the music, with Rocky’s lyrics growing more introspective and self-critical as it goes along. It’s a bittersweet song – he’s obsessing over changes in himself and others, and scrolling through Instagram envying other people who are embracing stability while he feels totally adrift. (Very relatable!)

Buy it from Amazon.