Photo by Justin Hogan 

A$AP Ferg came to work, but work is proving to be a problem. An unknown mechanical error has damaged the power at his label’s office in the Bronx, shrouding half the rooms in darkness and rendering the in-house studio inert. As employees run around trying to manage the problem, Ferg is simply hanging out. Amidst the chaos, he’s still an affable, free-wheeling charmer—the guy who’s friendly with everyone from Ariana Grande to Macklemore to Haim, and inspired enough to rhyme “Pikachu” with “Yeezus do.” If he’s annoyed by the electrical setback, he doesn’t show it.

I catch him in December during a rare pause in a life that has picked up steam since the release of 2013’s Trap Lord, which established Ferg as a stand-alone rapper worthy of his own Wikipedia destination. (For a while, his page automatically redirected to A$AP Rocky’s.) “The days to myself aren’t really days to myself because I don’t really sleep,” he says when I ask him what he does with his free time. “I love what I do so I don't stop when I’m supposed to stop.”

Ferg is currently on tour with YG and hoping to release his sophomore album early this year, but in the meantime, he’s put out a new mixtape called Ferg Forever. It’s a dense, disparate piece of work that flips between dancehall sex fantasy, earnest hood parable, and dada braggadocio. (The symptoms of “Fergsomnia” remain unspecified.) He’ll rap poetically about his complex relationship with his uncle, then speak-sing a laughably trivial account of performing at Bonnaroo for the first time. He also sings on “Real Thing”, but he doesn’t plan to hire a vocal coach anytime soon: “I’m not trying to be like Mariah Carey or nothing.” Ferg Forever is mixtape as stream-of-consciousness, an appetizer for Ferg fans who really care about his inner life—and the fact that those people exist at all is a testament to the niche he’s carving out for himself.

“My whole thing is to be an individual and not really respect history to the point where you won't want to create your own history,” he says, “to be bigger than the marvels you look at.” There are no meek rappers, of course, but I’ve seen his ability to deliver on such promises firsthand. Before Trap Lord was out, I interviewed Ferg and asked him about his aspirations for the coming year. “I will be in everybody’s iPod, everybody’s computer, everybody’s iTunes,” he said then. Within a few months, he proved his point with songs like “Shabba” and “Hood Pope”. So where is he going in 2015? “To the stars and probably Mars.”

"The new generation is not even down with that
racism and classism shit. They just want to have fun. It’s the
older people who can't get over the past and need to be left alone."

Pitchfork: You’ve toured with Skrillex and Diplo, and guested on songs by Haim and Ariana Grande. What do you think makes you so versatile?

A$AP Ferg: It’s just the type of person I am—everybody loves my energy and wants to hang out with me. In school, I was even cool with the uncool guys. It got me far in life because now I’m able to collaborate with a bunch of big, dope artists that are not a part of hip-hop. The Internet made it so that everything is blended-in anyway because all these pop kids—Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber—are inspired by hip-hop, dress like hip-hop, dance like hip-hop, so it’s a real thin line. And I’m open-minded enough to go across that line and then jump back into my world, or just be in the middle. I’m not boxed in at all.

Pitchfork: Within A$AP Mob, is it harder to stick together now that you and Rocky have attained individual success?

AF: You gotta understand that you got A$AP Rocky fans, and A$AP Ferg fans who just fuck with my shit, and A$AP Twelvyy fans who probably just fuck with his shit. But then you got A$AP fans who love to see us as a group together. It’s like Wu-Tang—you love Method Man, Ghostface, and Raekwon the Chef separately, but when they get together, that’s a force to be reckoned with. You only experience that shit a couple of times in your life. That group energy is what started everything, that’s the energy that the world saw first.

Pitchfork: “Talk It” is the new tape’s most explicitly political song, and there’s a line about driving around blasting N.W.A.’s “Fuck tha Police”. Recently, there was a story where someone was actually pulled over for doing that.

AF: Oh, shit. See, that’s why words are powerful; you can speak shit into fruition. You gotta watch what you do and what you say. But this is nothing new, with Ferguson and all that shit. But I feel like the new generation is not even down with that racism and classism shit. They just want to have fun. That’s what I love about us. It’s the older people who can't get over the past and need to be left alone. There’s a bunch of evils in the world that want to separate people, and I’m not with that. I believe we can live in a society together and enjoy each other.

Pitchfork: Do you consider yourself to be weirder than other rappers?

AF: Not weird, because nothing I talk about or do is weird. Honestly, I don’t think anything in this world is weird. I really can’t relate to that. I feel like I’m a different rapper, and not afraid to express myself. Different is what makes superstars. Michael Jackson was mad different, Jimi Hendrix was mad different. All of the big-ass uber superstars were different and never had to go with what was happening at the time.