A$AP Rocky is busy raising babies with his partner, a person named Rihanna, but he hasn’t given up on music completely. In recent times, Rocky has appeared on songs by Denzel Curry or Free Nationals or on the first joint album by Future and Metro Boomin and, above all, he has given news of his next album, which will be released on August 30. Since 2018, the year in which ‘Testing’ was released, the world has not seen a new album by A$AP Rocky.
This new album, ‘Don’t Be Dumb’, has been in the works for years, and it’s possible that it will contain some of the singles released by A$AP Rocky in the last couple of years, such as ‘Riot (Rowdy Pipe’n)’ with Pharrell Williams, ‘Same Problems?’ or that ‘DMB’ in whose video Rihanna appeared.
But A$AP Rocky’s new single, ‘Highjack’, is certainly included on ‘Don’t Be Dumb’, which features an unexpected guest appearance by Jessica Pratt, the folk singer behind records like ‘Quiet Signs’ and, this year, the excellent ‘Here in the Pitch’. Never in a million years would we have guessed that these two artists would collaborate on a song, but that’s just the way it is.
Aside from the charm of imagining Jessica Pratt, contemplative at home, thinking about what to add to bars like “Bitches hit my phone, talkin’ shit”, “Yeah, bitch, fat ass, pretty, I might wife that” or “you know you trippin’, Flacko different, know you like that”, ‘Highjack’ has the added attraction of sounding like the original A$AP Rocky, like on his first mixtape. The base is bright as the sun and, with the entrance of Jessica Pratt, who sings accompanied by a children’s choir, ‘Highjack’ enters another dimension.
A$AP Rocky has commented on his choice of collaborator in an interview with Zane Lowe. Specifically, Rocky said that he loves “alternative music” and that he has always liked Jessica Pratt because she sounds like “a mix between Portishead and Stevie Nicks.”
‘Highjack’ is of course not Jessica Pratt’s first foray into mainstream pop. As you may recall, Troye Sivan sampled a Pratt song on his last album, ‘Something to Give Each Other’, specifically in the track ‘Can’t Go Back, Baby’.
