Wednesday, January 28, 2026 |
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A$AP Rocky looked at me last December and said, "I'm in my Frank Sinatra era." We were photographing Rocky for our next cover, ahead of the release of his first new record since 2018. Rocky had just experienced a wild year: he welcomed his third child with Rihanna, beat gun charges, acted in two high-profile movies, and showed his fashion collection in Paris. How did he reach this point, and what does it mean that a man who grew up in and out of homeless shelters attained such success? That's what Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Mitchell S. Jackson sought to figure out. Shortly after Rocky mentioned Sinatra, he climbed into his red Ferrari and took Jackson deep into a New York City night. The story that Jackson wrote is unlike any you've seen about Rocky. Read it below. – Michael Sebastian, editor-in-chief |
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Hip-hop superstardom, a budding movie career, his own fashion line, and three kids with Rihanna. This is the new picture of success, and there ain't a picket fence in sight. |
Rocky guns the Ferrari against a light that just went red. A couple blocks down he slows and points to a building and tells me it's his old high school. I ask if it was a magnet school. "No, it was regular," he says, and laughs. A safe bet Rza, Riot, and Rocki won't attend regular schools—which I read as under-resourced and poor-performing—unless it's an intentional decision by their parents. And, celebrity or not, isn't that what good parents want for their children: a better, happier life than what they had? The utmost of opportunities. When Rocky's father went to prison, his absence sent his family, Rocky's mother and his sister Erika, into a financial slide. (Rocky's father, who had twelve children in total, didn't get out of prison until Rocky was in his early twenties, and he died in 2012.) Rocky, his mother, and his sister ended up moving from Harlem to North Carolina, where his mother intended to make a fresh start with her high school sweetheart but found herself forced to live in homeless shelters. Their rough life in shelters persisted when the family moved back to New York. In interviews, Rocky has said he used to be "embarrassed" about living in shelters. "My friend used to be like, 'I'm comin' over,' and I'd be like, I can't have company," he said. Rocky still has family uptown, including his grandmother, a woman who refuses to move out of her building. Rocky caught the train uptown to see his grandmother on a recent trip to New York, disguising himself with a balaclava. He subwayed up rather than driving himself or being chauffeured because "I don't like to floss when I go up there and shit like that. Not saying that I'm flossing, but you know, my lifestyle is very, like, fortunate. So I don't like throwing that ... rubbing that in less fortunate people face, man," Rocky says. "It's very important. Humility, man. Humanity. You know, just being humble, for the most part. It's so easy to get gassed off this shit." |
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Valentine's Day is coming up, which means two things: One, you have to prepare something romantic for the official holiday of Love (yes, the capital L is intentional) and try to meet high expectations. And two, you should get your wife a gift. Not just any gift, either—a romantic one. And if you've been married for years, surprising the person who's seen you sick, stressed, and wearing that one t-shirt you refuse to retire can feel like trying to pull off a magic trick. |
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Fillers have a branding problem. For years, they've been associated with overfilled cheeks, swollen faces, and a vague sense that something has gone wrong. It's a safe generalization to say that many men approach fillers with high levels of skepticism. But that reputation has far more to do with outdated technique than modern practice, says Anthony E. Brissett, a Houston-based double-board-certified facial plastic surgeon and current president of the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. At the core of Brissett's approach is a simple but often missed distinction. "Filler is not a shortcut; it's a tool," he says. Used correctly, it isn't about chasing a line or adding volume where something looks off. It's about restoring support in places most people don't immediately notice, reinforcing structure so the face ages better over time rather than being patched together session by session. |
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