Village Voice: How A$AP Yams’s Legacy Won’t Be Forgotten

It’s hard to imagine a time when the A$AP Mob didn’t exist. A$AP Ferg, one the Mob’s breakout stars, is phoning in from Kansas City, Missouri on G-Eazy’s When It’s Dark Out Tour contemplating this thought. He backs it up with the fact that the late A$AP Yams had the foresight to see the crew’s lasting power.

“You gotta think when A$AP Mob came into existence; it was nothing like us out. And Yams had the vision for all of that,” Ferg says. “He was a kid like everybody else, but he was on a new level, and nobody was on it. So when we came out, it was fresh. Everybody wanted a piece of A$AP. They wanted to know us, they wanted to be our friends, they wanted learn from us. And now, this is just a product of what happened.”

Ferg is referring to New York crews evolving from the models of Dipset and G-Unit, who all promoted a grittier sound rather than reinvent the future. As the Mob were the driving forces of an open-minded, universal approach to making music, it set the stage for Flatbush Zombies, Pro Era, The Underachievers and more to flourish. While A$AP Rocky became the poster-child for drawing inspirations at all points of the map, Yams deserves just as much credit for shaping the eclectic palates of the Internet generation and being an advocate for new acts behind the scenes.