A$AP Rocky revealed he made Don’t Be Dumb with a first Grammy win in mind, setting a clear goal for the album and ending his eight-year gap between projects.
The Harlem rapper discussed that push in a new Billboard interview as the first round of voting began. He described a year in which music took the lead over his other work in fashion, film and directing. The album reached No. 1 after its January release. He also pointed to his arena shows as part of his case.
A$AP Rocky, seen lately on flame-lit arena stages holding a megaphone as a mic, is speaking a little more quietly than usual. “I was going dummy,” A$AP Rocky says with a strained voice, crediting his vocal ailment to hyping up a crowd in Athens on his final Don’t Be Dumb tour stop in Europe a couple days earlier. The Harlem rapper chose 2026, after a few teases and false starts, to end an eight-year gap in his discography. He released the chart-topping Don’t Be Dumb in January, and ever since, it felt like Pretty Flacko was everywhere all at once: awards shows, Chanel fashion shows, his own 6,000-plus-attendee AWGE fashion show, magazine covers, and in the streets of Manhattan (security detail be damned) telling the world that he, himself, is a New York Knick.
Calling from Paris, admittedly a bit homesick after all of the traveling, A$AP Rocky gives Rolling Stone his progress report for the year, talking about his record-breaking fashion show, why he’s dyed his hair red, and inviting Riot, his three-year-old son with Rihanna, onstage in Copenhagen. He says he’s gearing up for a mysterious “next chapter” and one more Don’t Be Dumb tour leg across Australia and New Zealand in December. “We gonna go dumb again. That’s the name of that tour,” he says. “I wish I could have hit South America and Africa, but that’s gonna have to be next.” And he teases Disc 2, an upcoming project he calls “an extension” of Don’t Be Dumb.