After being found not guilty in his most recent court trial, former Grammy nominee, A$AP Rocky, is highly speculated to drop his upcoming album, DON’T BE DUMB within a short timeframe.
A$AP Rocky is a 36-year-old American rapper whose real name is Rakim Mayers. He is well known for his hip-hop and psychedelic rap, along with his unique and influential dressing style. His industry-leading fashion taste attracted global superstar Rihanna who he is in a public relationship and has multiple kids with. While no longer known just for his music career, he used to be considered one of the greats, despite only having 3 studio albums published, his most recent one being released in 2018. After taking such a long break, he’s finally gearing up to release a new album titled DON’T BE DUMB. This extended music drought has fans wildly anticipating his first album in nearly 7 years.
A$AP ROCKY officially announced DON’T BE DUMB in 2022 and eventually gave an official release date of August, 2024 at Rakim’s first fashion show that same year. While he initially planned to release it in August, he delayed the project to autumn of 2024 due to multiple leaks and clearance issues. Eventually, he missed that deadline as well and with a court case threatening to send him to jail for up to 24 years, updates on the album slowly slowed down.
While many people gave up on the release of his teased album because of broken promises and the unstable journey that the album has been on, he finally has new motivation to release it. A$AP Rocky was on trial with the risk of spending over 20 years in jail if he was found guilty. However, he was found not guilty on February 18th, 2025. He, as well as many fans, was overjoyed by this news which sparked a newfound reason for Rakim to release music once again.
He is officially a free man and can work on and deliver music as a celebration of the recent news. While on trial, music-making was likely not a top priority—especially after struggling with publishing dramas while working on it previously. Since then, Rakim expressed his love for music making, and despite the hiatus since his last album, he stated how he hasn’t lost any of the fuel required to make a passionate project.
He has already released singles, which are published songs that are speculated to be present on his album when it later releases. Songs Highjack and Tailor Swif have been impressively successful with both nearing 50 million total streams on Spotify. Many critics have rated the songs highly, making them both great return pieces for A$AP Rocky. If he can follow these up with songs of the same quality, DON’T BE DUMB is guaranteed to be a hit.
Along with these releases, Rakim, and many other notable hip hop figures, simply tweeted the words “DON’T BE DUMB” on Twitter following his acquittal hearing, further teasing the album. Most recently, on February 25th, A$AP Rocky released a new snippet of a song he’s been working on with Metro Boomin. It was followed by mixed reactions, but many are still excited for him to drop the album. Three days later in an interview with Gentlemen’s Quarterly, he stated that he’s finally in the “mixing and mastering realm of [the album]”, essentially meaning the album is nearly done and ready to be released.
In that same interview, Rakim Mayers stated that he would no longer be giving updates about the album after repeatedly missing deadlines and disappointing fans. However, there is a good chance that the album will be released as soon as April, despite his last 2 albums releasing both in May. Many fans believe sometime in May will be the release date because of that; but there are reasons to believe the brief album release date pattern will have little impact on his upcoming release. AT. LONG. LAST. ASAP was intended to be released in June, but leaked early, forcing Rakim to officially release it in May, unplanned so the month holds no personal value. This, coupled with the fact that A$AP Rocky is in the final stages of working on his album makes it likely that the album will release as soon as April. Especially with his newfound eagerness to entertain fans, and prove himself once again.
No matter the release date, fans eagerly await his return to music. Will he silence the critics? Or fail to meet expectations? We’ll all find out soon.
