A$AP Twelvyy Talks Releasing His Long-Awaited Debut Without His Mentor A$AP Yams
Jamel "A$AP Twelvyy" Phillips was, along with A$AP Yams, one of the founders of the A$AP Mob, the crew that's taken over its hometown of NYC, and much of the world as well. With the solo stardoms of A$AP Rocky and A$AP Ferg firmly established, it's Twelvyy's turn.
Twelvyy's brand new album 12 paints a picture of his life growing up in Harlem and then in the Castle Hill (or "Castle Hell," as the opening song has it) section of the Bronx, finding his crew, and the triumphs and tragedies that occurred along the way—the most notable of the which is Yams' death in 2015. His loss permeates the album.
I sat down with Twelvyy, 28, at the Complex office to get an idea of how the album came to be—and what a certain cold-remedy-inspired viral hit had to do with anything.
The first thing I wanted to ask you is very serious. There was a period of time growing up where you were banned from listening to rap, so you listened to other stuff instead. So I wanted to know which song on the album was most influenced by the Backstreet Boys.
Yea Yea Yea is the only song that I put my rock and pop culture influences around. I could not listen to hip-hop for quite a long time.
So there was a lot of teen pop and whatever was on the radio and MTV.
Backstreet Boys, 'NSync. Man, I remember listening to All American Rejects, Alien Ant Farm, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, watching the Gorillaz on TV every day. I never was like, Yo, I’m about to listen to this rap album. I was like, Yo I’m about to listen to All American Rejects." I’m in the projects, I'm in
Kingdome basketball games [in Harlem] listening to pop music while the hood is around me, and it just took me somewhere else.
It was Akinyele who got you in all that trouble?
Akinyele got me in trouble, yeah. I was young and my aunt just had another daughter. So she had two daughters and I’m the oldest one in the house. I’m around the house like, [
sings] "
Put it in your mouth" and she's like, "Put what? What are you talking about?" I’m like, "I don’t know," and I got my ass whooped. Shout out to Akinyele.
The original title of the album was 2127301090, which isn't actually a phone number—it had a longer explanation behind it. Why change the title? Were you worried about too many prank calls to the number?
Not the prank calls. I feel like it’s easier to present
12. If I got
2127301090 I gotta go through it, I gotta say it fast, I gotta break it down. I wanna break it down later. So right now I just get em to
12.
And then you can get into the 10 percent this, 90 percent that.
The 10% loyal, 90% grimy. Loyal to what you’re loyal to, you’re not to what you not.
730, that’s the mindstate of our whole city. It’s crazy. We are very mental out here.
I know your rap name went through a couple incarnations. Did you ever have a rap name that wasn’t 212-related?
My first rap name was Mel Banks, inspired by Lloyd Banks. My screen name was melbanks11 and Yams' was PurpleCity. We were inspired by our favorite groups at that time—mine was G-Unit and bro's was Dipset. It went from Mel Banks to Mel Love. I went for Mel Love for a month and Yams was like...this was before Yams was Yams.
Stevie was like, "I don’t know about that Mel Love—it ain’t gonna hit."
What else did I try? I just tried "Mel," period, and it didn’t work, so "212 Mel" stuck. I actually started a rap group with my bro. His name was 212 Matt. He don’t rap no more, but he used to rap when we was younger. We was just known as 212 together.
I’m in the middle right now of writing a big piece about Stack Bundles.
This is the greatest interview I’ve ever had already, bro. You’re doing a piece on Stack Bundles? Word.
What was it about him that grabbed you, out of all the mixtape rappers of that era?
My first experience with Stack Bundles was the "Y'all Cats Is Trash" video. It was the first Smack DVD video I’d ever seen of him. He had a white tee on, and everybody else had bandanas on they face, camo on—it was crazy.
It looked like one of those war visuals they used to show us. It was like somebody giving a message from Kuwait or something. It looked like he was live from war, rapping. I’m like, who
is this? He was the first light-skinned cat I’d seen that aggressive, just talking his shyt. I was like, I like this kid.
After "Y’all nikkas Is Trash,"
he freestyled on "Bad News," and "Bad News" was one of my favorite G-Unit songs. I'm a fan of Queens music, period. Stack Bundles rapped on it talking about
rainbow colored diamonds all looking like Italian icey. I said, Italian icey? I’m not into jewelry, I ain’t got no money, [but] I know what Italian icey is. I like Italian icey. This guy’s fly as shyt, man.
Then I went and bought the
Rap’s Makeover CD myself.
[The cover] was a press conference and he had Jay-Z there, Jadakiss, he had mad people there. I’m like, Yo, this kid is really crazy. It was nothing but great music. He didn’t have no trash music, and this was when a lot of people was getting put on and they was
trash. They wasn't messing with Stack Bundles.
You were just winding up high school when he died, right?
I was about two weeks away from graduating. I had just gotten reinstated in school. I got kicked out of school, but my mother fought for me to stay in school. I think the day I came back to school, Yams was like, "Stack Bundles died." I’m on my way to school, crying. I was sick. That whole day I caused hell and almost got kicked out of school again.
Your cousin is [the producer] Buckwild. Did you know about his music and his crew Diggin In The Crates and all that growing up?
When I hit my teenage years. The early years, I didn’t know. My pop would run in and out, drop him off. I didn’t know until one day my pops brought me a bag full of throwback jerseys. I had one of the jerseys on
in the "Hella Hoes" video—the Pistol Pete jersey.
Buckwild gave us wild throwback jerseys and shyt like that. Remember the Biggie album with
the Eminem "Dead Wrong" remix [the posthumous 1999 album
Born Again]? He gave us that early. I ain’t gonna lie—he gave me mad Bad Boy music dumb early, the Lil Kim "
No matter what people say," all these songs I heard before they even came out. I didn't know until recently.
He used to come give my pops exclusive music, just to listen to. That was my first experience with it. Then getting into the rap game, I still haven’t worked with him because I didn’t wanna make it seem like I was just using my cousin for his name or nothing like that.
It’s funny you mention Bad Boy because you have a line on the new record about how your nickname used to be Diddy. Why?
The first fight I had, I was dancing. I was in the Bronx, I had a fight with this kid, and I was dancing on him. My man Hommo the Great called me Diddy. It went from him calling me Diddy to everybody just being like, "Diddy, yo Diddy, what’s up." And it just stuck.
My whole Diddy lifestyle was a bad boy lifestyle. It was honestly a bad lifestyle. So when I wanted to break away from it, I just got into the Twelvyy.
Would you talk about Yams a little bit? When you first meet him, you’re 15 or 16, you don’t even rap, and you don’t live in Harlem. He says, "I want the best rapper in Harlem," and you’re like, "It’s me." What about him inspired you that much?
His whole internet profile was just the illest I’ve ever seen. It was like, Jim Jones here, it was Max B here, other up-and-coming rappers and artists. I remember he had videos of going to rap battles and stuff like that, so I felt like he was for real. I never seen anybody post, "I’m looking for somebody." So I was like, this is my shot. I hit him back like, I’m gonna make you a million, and it just carried on from there.
[I remember] us meeting on the day of the "Chicken Noodle Soup" video and not getting in and going to Kingdome.
The "Chicken Noodle Soup" video?
I forgot why, but Yams and Teyana [Taylor] used to be a part of some shyt called
Team N.E.R.D. Yams and Illz and Bari used to be a part of Team N.E.R.D. too.
So I don’t know what happened, but Teyana and Team N.E.R.D. and Yams and them had a falling out, and Yams had made the ASAP shyt. I don’t think it was really called ASAP the day we met—it wasn’t really nothing. Big Haiti was the one that made the acronym ASAP: Always Strive and Prosper.
It all kind of just started from "Chicken Noodle Soup." Being inspired by "Chicken Noodle Soup," wanting to be a part of "Chicken Noodle Soup," wanting that to be
our video shoot. I remember we got in fights, like, We got to go here, and we couldn’t get in. It was crazy.
I read an interview you did a while ago where you said this record’s been done for years. If I had heard your record in 2014 or 2015, how different would it be from what I heard just now?
It’s a few major elements that weren’t on there at that time, so I’m happy I took my time with it and got through another year of greatness. It wasn’t ready in 2015, 2016. Even if Yams said it was a classic then, there was just still a couple more pieces I had to tweak. Especially "Hop Out" and the skits, and then the outro is about Yams. A lot of the content of "EasTSideGhosT" and stuff like that is about Yams, and it just forced me to finish it. Not in the fashion I wanted to, but…
Since Yams was so much of the brains behind the whole group’s plans and strategy, what has it been like to finish and release an album without him?
It’s weird. It’s just weird. You just want your bro there, but he's not there. That’s about it. But I know he's shining. I know his energy isn’t in the physical form, so I know he still got us.