When A$AP Rocky burst onto the scene, one thing was immediately clear: he was cool. Plenty of people try to put on a contrived aura in the hope of convincing people they’re cool. But Rocky always had a natural charisma that people gravitated towards early in his career. When he declared himself “that pretty motherf***er” on “Peso”, people bought it because he did. The confidence has always been immense in his music and in how he carries himself on screen. Combine that with his screen presence on film, and it garnered a lot of comparisons to Tupac.
This was a high bar for A$AP Rocky to reach, leading to a lot of skepticism. Tupac was more than just a charismatic figure. He spoke with political fervor and there was a fiery passion in his delivery that made him inimitable. Even Rocky himself was squeamish towards the comparison.
In a 2015 interview with The New York Times, he said that the comparison between him and Pac isn’t even a fair match. Pac has a universal impact, widening the scope of how people understand hip-hop. In the spirit of respecting his elders, Rocky conceded to Pac’s superstardom. He doesn’t put himself down in the slightest but he stressed that some shoes are just too big to fill.
A$AP Rocky Addresses the Tupac Comparisons Early in His Career
“I think that’s not a fair comparison. Those shoes are way too big to try to fill. I’m nothing like Pac. Nobody is, you know? It would be an honor to be influential and to be as revolutionary and universal as he was, to have that kind of impact with a genre like hip-hop. Which is, at this point — don’t even get me started with hip-hop,” A$AP Rocky said.
The interview obviously begged for further clarification, something Rocky was evasive to talk about. Instead, he cryptically said that what he was making at the time was art vs. some of the music of the time. “All I can tell you is that A$AP Yams was one of the most influential hip-hop pioneers of today. I have him and Danger Mouse executive chef-ing this mystical magical piece that we call art, my music today. And that’s all I’m really gonna say, man. It’s not what it used to be,” A$AP Rocky argued.
All of this further added to Rocky’s point: what Tupac pulled off in his tragically short life is incomparable. Legends of that magnitude are in their own tier and Rocky wanted to respect that. It’s even the reason he didn’t embrace his birth name as his rap name. “For Tupac to do what he did, I commend him. I have nothing but respect,” A$AP Rocky continued. “That’s also why I didn’t come out with my name, Rakim, because those shoes are too big to fill. So I’m just trying to pioneer my own legacy.”
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