Ryan Hemsworth & ASAP DJs At Boiler Room NYC

It’s impossible to understate the impact that ASAP Yams’ Tumblr has had on the ASAP sound and hip hop as a whole. If you’ve listened to pre-LiveLoveA$AP Rocky material, then that is very clear. Before meeting and being inundated with Yams’ knowledge and cultural breadth, Rocky was another run-of-the-mill New York MC almost entirely bereft of the fashion image he has now come to embody. There would be no purple in Rocky’s sound, no coke and white bitches if it wasn’t for Yams. Recently, Ryan Hemsworth and the “ASAP DJs” went b2b at a special Boiler Room NYC event (similar to the one they pulled off in London last year) and I can’t figure a more perfect manifestation of Yams’ influence. Hemsworth, in many ways, follows in the steps of Yams as cultural kaleidoscope, bringing a deep knowledge of 90s hip hop and popular culture to an increasingly young fan base. The mixing across the hour and ten minutes Hemsworth and the ASAP crew were on the decks is spotty at best (some have blamed a faulty needle), but that’s not really the point. Rocky actually spends the most time behind the decks, but again that’s not really the point. Yams’ influence is palpable as Rocky and Hemsworth bounce between club edits and late-90s Houston, Atlanta and Memphis with a choice Young Scooter number thrown in for good measure. Like Yams’ Tumblr, the mix is an amalgamation of the origins of contemporary hip hop sounds thrown into a blender with the best of 2013.