Where You?re From and Where You?re @

But in 2012-era hip-hop, Harlem (and Brooklyn, and Detroit, and Miami, and Atlanta, and Toronto, and on and on) is becoming less a specific place that an artist hails from and tailors her sound to reflect, and more an aesthetic option, among many, that she can gesture toward or ignore as she sees fit. Another notable hip-hop rookie is the smooth-talking A$AP Rocky, who also comes from Harlem, but who stresses to interviewers how geographically unrestricted his style is: A product, he says, of an adolescence spent devouring not only New York titans like Eric B. and Rakim (his parents named him after the latter artist) but also acts like DJ Quik, from Los Angeles, and UGK, from Port Arthur, Texas. In his songs, Rocky is as comfortable maneuvering through the slow-mo sludge of Texas screw-music as he is aping the singsong pitter-patter of Cleveland?s Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, and he?s no less convincing for this carpet-bagging. Many of his tracks fall into a new, Internet-born sub-sub-genre, nicknamed ?cloud rap? for its diaphanous textures and foggy melodies. Cloud rap?s other main practitioners hail from the Bay Area (Lil B, Main Attrakionz), Seattle (Keyboard Kid), and New Jersey (Clams Casino), all of them collaborating with each other via broadband connections?cloud has a nice double meaning in this context. We listen to an artist like Atlanta?s Young Jeezy, in part, for his blunt evocation of place: run-down drug houses, musty strip joints, classic cars orbiting the perimeter. We listen to an artist like A$AP Rocky for rich evocations of everywhere and nowhere.

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