A$AP Rocky on Weed Crimes, Lana Del Rey and the Virtues of Being Weird

A few hours after his rain-soaked performance at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago on Friday, A$AP Rocky still can't come to grips with what went down midway through his set: a few minutes after he stagedove into the poncho-clad crowd, he implored them to give him some of whatever they were smoking. Then he was handed some disappointing product.

"Somebody threw regular weed," the 23-year-old Harlem MC tells Rolling Stone, still exacerbated by the horror. "You cannot throw regular weed to the lords. Chicago don't do it like that. That's disrespectful. That's a sin. Forgive whoever did that. Forgive him. Forgive his soul."

The beauty of A$AP Rocky – one of the biggest names to emerge in hip-hop over the past year – is that whether he's actually upset about the earlier weed situation or not, the man who asserts in his mixtape cut "Wassup" that "the only thing bigger than my ego is my mirror" seems to believe everything coming out of his mouth. And it keeps coming. The next topic? His motivation for starring in fellow blog-fueled newcomer Lana Del Rey's music video for "National Anthem," a serious acting turn in which Rocky plays JFK to Del Rey's Jackie O. "I had a crush on her before I met her," he explains. "I wanted to fuck her and shit. When I met her and really found out what type of person she was, she became more of a friend. And I loved the character that she was [in the video] and the artist that she is, to the point where I don't wanna fuck her no more."

At this, Rocky's 10-deep crew, the A$AP Mob, breaks into laughter. Rocky gets upset. "Why the fuck ya'll niggas laughing? Everybody in this room would fuck her."

Things quiet down. Rocky gets to talking about the benefits of fame; on the strength of mixtapes alone (his official full-length debut, LongLiveA$AP, is due on September 11th) he signed a deal with Sony/RCA for a rumored $3 million. He's had some time now to process his rapid ascent. "It feels good,” he says of his newfound celebrity. "I ain't gonna lie to you. It's pussy all over the place, a lot of money to be made." Rocky says he's also become something of an expert at reading others. "You meet somebody for the first time and if it's genuine you know it," he says. "But when you meet a motherfucker and you can tell he's suckin' dick and he just coming around 'cause you got this shit going on and everything is looking good – especially the motherfucker that never spoke to you back in the days – those motherfuckers, you be like, 'Suck a dick.'"

Rocky leans back in his chair. "Nowadays, everybody wanna be weird," he says. "We know how to manifest being weird. We know we some weird-ass looking motherfuckers, and we know we do some weird shit." He pauses. "But at the same time, we some geniuses."