Rocky’s instincts aren’t always unreliable. Both scenarios are damning Blonde’s fluidity and depth are the product of a specific and pained artistic vision its style and experimentation are means, not ends. Ocean’s actual appearances on “Purity” and “Brotha Man” ground his muse by showing a genuine aesthetic overlap-Rocky and Ocean are fond of murky, immersive soundscapes and sharp pivots between longing and lucidity-but Rocky’s Blonde retreads are a lack of direction at best and yet more taste-signalling at worst. From the seagulls and surf-rock flourishes of “Kids Turned Out Fine,” to the verbatim citation of Blonde on “A$AP Forever,” to the constant pitch-shifts and nonlinear storytelling, Blonde serves as a direct and indirect template for Rocky’s sprawling interests. Testing is in many ways Rocky’s attempt to remake Frank Ocean’s insular 2016 album Blonde. When Rocky’s intuitions aren’t painfully straightforward, they’re outsourced. “My whole life I just wanted to be a rapper/Then I grew’d up and the boy became a rapper,” he summarizes as if nothing happened in between.

“OG Beeper” tells the story of a young Rocky wishing to be a rapper by offering the beginning and the end. For the opener “Distorted Records” Rocky chants the song title over.distorted bass. Rocky constantly conflates method with insight, process with vision.Īnd his vision is often literal. Rocky’s Kodak support comes off as an empty flex his long-running infatuation with Memphis rap feels like muscle memory. All this density makes these songs dynamic, but it doesn’t mask their aimlessness. Kodak’s bluesy vocals are garbled and gnashed, a sonic ugly cry. “CALLDROPS” works similarly, heaping a blissful sample of Dave Bixby’s “Morning Sun” onto muted, nonsensical croons from Rocky and Dean Blunt, who then cede space to an incarcerated Kodak Black. The sum of all this layering is a leaning Jenga tower of sounds that hisses and warbles like a shaky radio signal. Rocky’s flow slides in and out of sync with Pat’s signature staccato, generating a counter-rhythm that gets played up by choice record scratches. On “Gunz N Butter” Rocky’s distorted vocals are stacked atop a chunky, pitched-down sample of Project Pat’s “ Still Ridin Clean” that’s accented by ad-libs from Juicy J (who is also a guest on the Project Pat song). His approach to songcraft on Testing is to mash sounds together and capture the friction. Like the crash dummies from which Testing and LAB RAT crib their aesthetics, Rocky is enamored with collision.

If curation is the union of taste and restraint, intuition is the union of taste and curiosity. Testing, Rocky’s third studio album and first outing without the direct oversight of his late friend and counsel A$AP Yams, uses intuition as its guiding force, broadening Rocky’s palette by simply trusting what he likes and what he doesn’t.

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