It was a bit surprising when Tyler, the Creator and A$AP Rocky announced a co-headlining tour back in August of 2015, as the dementedly creative Odd Future firebrand and the A$AP Mob’s jiggiest, prettiest motherfucker seemed like an odd pair. Perhaps it was just a marketing ploy seeking to find the profitable center of a young rap fan Venn Diagram? Almost two years on, the unlikely duo have definitively disproven that theory, as today marks their third time collaborating on music together.
Preceded by an uproariously fun in-studio remix of Kanye West’s “Freestyle 4” and the all-over-the-place closing track of A$AP Mob’s Cozy Tapes Vol. 1, “Telephone Calls,” “Who Dat Boy” is Tyler and Rocky’s latest. On it, the duo’s differences are highlighted, with Tyler problematically referencing the Boston Marathon bombing and saying “fuck rap I’m tryna own a planet,” and Rocky going completely off-topic and, in an otherwise chaotic, abrasive song, referencing sex with the line, “Make the dick disappear, how she do that there?”
Nevertheless, “Who Dat Boy” also proves that these two have much more in common than you’d expect. About a third of each of their verses is devoted to fashion, and whether they value originality (Tyler’s “Cons, overalls, and a striped shirt”) or luxury (Rocky’s “Never seen your n**** in this much Raf”), it’s clear they can find common ground in their cloth talk. There’s also some definite shared love for bizarre videos, as they both have a few of those under their belts, with “Who Dat Boy” definitely joining those ranks.
Sometimes it feels like Tyler already might already have a picture of the video in his mind when he’s writing songs, as could be the case with the “half his face blown off” lyrics of “Who Dat Boy,” which is taken extremely literally in the video. In it, he and Rocky play mad scientist experimenting with ethnicity transplants a la the recent movie Get Out. Gore and car chases follow, as they do in any good action movie.
“Who Dat Boy” is one of two new tracks that Tyler premiered yesterday, the second of which, “911/Mr. Lonely,” features Frank Ocean and is featured briefly at the end of this video. Check out audio of both tracks on Spotify.
