By Mari Apazidis
A$AP Rocky headlined Rolling Loud New York 2022, and boy was it SOMETHING. My friends and I were posted by the railing adjacent to the long passageway that separated the two crowds. We were very far from the main stage, but if the artist went all the way down to the end of the stage that was enveloped between the crowd, we had a half-decent view. Little did we know that Rocky had little intention of using the stage at all.
While waiting for Rocky, a crew of people brought out this white platform on wheels that appeared hollow (we speculated that Rocky was possibly hiding in the platform and would appear from inside). There was also a ladder on the platform, and it was placed in that hollow opening that just so happened to be directly next to my friends and I. When Rocky finally arrived, we were all shocked to see that he was performing on the white moving platform for the majority of his set. The whole show was mayhem. There were dancers dressed in white and moshers from the crowd surrounding the platform throughout Rocky’s set (it was a little bit unclear how the moshers got there, presumably they jumped the railing that separated the crowd from the long passageway where the platform was).
Rocky brought multiple people up onto the platform with him, notably A$AP Ant who he performed “The God Hour” with. The platform moved up and down the passageway every so often which resulted in the dancers surrounding the platform to reconfigure. Throughout all of this, my friends and I were completely freaking out at the fact that THE A$AP Rocky was right in front of us, so close we could almost touch him.
One of the coolest parts of the experience was Rocky’s choice to perform the majority of his set in the middle of the crowd. I’m sure that the die hard fans that fought tooth and nail to get to the front were incredibly frustrated, and rightfully so, but it was a nice breath of fresh air to enjoy an awesome artist up close without being inside a violently unforgiving mosh pit. I’d like to think that Rocky deliberately wanted to extend his presence deeper into the crowd and connect more with everyone at the concert, which was a very nice sentiment.
However, Rocky showed up very late, resulting in an incredibly short set about thirty minutes long. He also didn’t perform his more popular songs, opting for unreleased songs and a couple of classics such as “Lord Pretty Flacko”, “Jordye 2”, and “Telephone Calls”.
The overall consensus was that Rocky’s set was terrible because of its short length and set list, which was something I personally didn’t consider since I was just so overjoyed to have lucked out being so close to him.
Christian DeJesus, the biggest A$AP Rocky fan I’ve ever met, commented on Rocky’s set. “Being that it was my first festival and second concert ever, it was incredible to see my favorite artist, you know, perform. For me, at least, it was pretty crazy to be the first group of people to hear new songs and snippets, especially in person rather than on Soundcloud.”
Personally, I thought it was awesome to see a popular artist go against the grain. As an artist, he made choices that were significant for his art by choosing to showcase his newer pieces rather than crowd pleasers. Overall, it was such an awesome set for me and the highlight of my Rolling Loud experience.
