A$AP Rocky, Dearly Missing A$AP Yams, Half of Their Formidable Hip-Hop Tag Team

ASAP Rocky and ASAP Yams fought exactly once.

It was 2009, and the two were far away from the men they were going to become: Rocky the genre-moving rapper who would challenge and remake the sound of New York hip-hop, and Yams the behind-the-scenes maestro who would shape the palate of hip-hop’s Internet generation, steering Rocky to a gold debut album in the process.

Back then they were would-bes, close friends at the beginning of a long journey. Yams was involved with a woman who organized concerts and had invited Rocky to perform at one. The two came downtown from Harlem only to find that there wasn’t time for Rocky to perform after all.

They got into it outside a downtown McDonald’s, Rocky indignant and Yams telling him: “You think you all that! You think you Kanye!”

As happens with close friends, the fight melted into nothing, and both ended up waiting for the train back uptown, Yams without his shirt, which had been lost in the fight. The next day Yams broke things off with the woman, telling Rocky he’d never let anyone get in the way of what they were trying to build.

Continue reading on the New York Times.