3 weeks ago
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Ferg doesn't take issue with ASAP Rocky being considered the frontman of ASAP Mob.
The Harlem rapper, who released his latest album Darold last month, was a guest on Earn Your Leisure’s webseries, High Level Conversations, where he discussed battling his ego while Rocky was considered head of the collective.
Around the 2:08:00 mark of the video below, Ferg told host 19keys that Rocky simply "had more skin in the game" when ASAP Mob started blowing up in the early 2010s.
"He wanted to do it first. I was like, 'I'm a designer, I'm going to make art design,' all of that stuff," Ferg said.
But Rocky urged Ferg to embark on the Mob's plans as they sought to go mainstream. "He's the one who got the label deal, he's the one who signed the artists and he's the one who had all of the relationships first," Ferg said. "So, of course, he's going to be ahead of everybody."
"And, in fact, we put him on a pedestal–'Yo, break open this door for us so that's my understanding of it."
The "Allure" rapper added that he "knows how to sit in the passenger side."
"I used to go to meetings with him, sit downs with Adidas and see how he maneuver and how he's talking to these people," he continued. "I used to like–even quiet time, like 'Yo, what is he observing? What is he looking at? I'm just learning the way. There's gigs that he wouldn't pick up that I was able to eat off of."
"I knew how to wait my turn," Ferg added. "And I knew what I was bringing to the game is different, my music is different, my energy is different. It's a preference thing, it's like football players is might be listening more to me than Rocky or whatever the case may be."
Earlier in the conversation (around the 2:05:00 mark), Ferg talked about how some ASAP Mob associates might've felt like they were owed although they left the crew prematurely.
"It's that whole thing too is that dynamic–people feeling like you owe them something or whatever just because they may have came up with a name or started something or whatever. And you're doing the work, like no, we all got hands and feet we could do this. You've got to work just like I work."
He also clarified that ASAP Mob was a record label as ASAP Worldwide, not a group as previously believed.
"When Yams found artists and him and Rocky was signing artists, it wasn't intended for us to be like a boy band. We just mobbed everywhere and we went on tour together. But as soon as Ferg got a hit record, I went and I toured myself."
Four years ago, Ferg told Genius that he considered himself a founding member of ASAP Mob, as referenced on Floor Seats II track "Big A$AP."
"I don’t think there’s no breaking up of the Mob. It’s like, once you’re in the Mob, you can't get out," he said at the time. "This is blood in, blood out ... The different families, they war with each other and shit, because one mob member leave and then they build they own shit and then it becomes a thing. But you can never get out of the mob. So that’s not even a thing."
He continued, "When you get older, people grow in different directions as well. What was once cool is not even cool anymore. And some people can handle your evolution. Some people didn’t evolve yet. Some people don’t understand your evolution or whatever the case may be, but that's OK. And then you have discrepancies and people, they just go against what your whole thing is. And everybody has a different agenda, so that’s OK. That’s life."
English (US) ·