A few months ago, A$AP Rocky's career seemed mired in purgatory. The 24-year-old Harlem rapper had a spectacular 2011, snagging a still-crazy $3 million deal with RCA based on early buzz and then silencing skeptics with his breakout LiveLoveA$AP mixtape. But throughout 2012, LongLiveA$AP repeatedly failed to materialize. It was slated for July 4th, then September 11th, October 31, and eventually, sometime in December. When the final pushback happened, into the dead zone just after the new year, it began to feel like RCA was attempting to quietly jettison their investment from the corporate hull.

But LongLiveA$AP delivers on and even exceeds the promise of LiveLoveA$AP. Like that mixtape, the album is a triumph of craft and curation, preserving Rocky's immaculate taste while smartly upgrading his sound. A third of the record remains close in style to LiveLoveA$AP while most of the collaborations follow in the steps of last spring's "Goldie", which stamped producer Hit-Boy's signature Mini-Boss Musik with a screwed-up hook and gumball-spitting flow that marked it as unmistakably Rocky's. Plenty of rap-industry heavies appear on LongLiveA$AP, and they mix well with Rocky's younger comrades. More importantly, the French-braid gold-teeth kid named after Rakim never cedes the center. For someone often criticized for his lack of depth, A$AP Rocky keeps delivering in the face of skepticism.

Even the most dubious ideas succeed on LongLiveA$AP. For example, A$AP Rocky's team-up with Skrillex, "Wild for the Night", bombs your cortex with screaming lasers, stadium-sized reverb, and a reggae-derived organ lope, and the beat feels like being on the receiving end of a perfectly executed Tekken chain combo. It seems like it should be impossible to rap over, but Rocky’s sweat-free double-dutch is an easy fit. Santigold handles the chorus hook on “Hell”, one of two Clams Casino beats on the album, and it feels just as unforced.

A$AP Rocky sounds natural in every setting; along with his command of rhythm and cadence, this is his greatest gift. Whether he's showing off double- and triple-time bounce in the T-Minus-produced "PMW (All I Really Need)" or dodging RZA-styled string chops on "1 Train" alongside a collision of hot rappers including Action Bronson, Big K.R.I.T., and Kendrick Lamar, Rocky sounds utterly at home. Even when he stomps through a queasy Odd Future-style battlefield on “Jodye”, he fully owns the mold. That kind of malleability is crucial to pop stardom, and make no mistake, pop stardom is what Rocky's gunning for. His lyrics, a riot of lifestyle brands and other desirables, can feel like standing in front of a closet of prohibitively expensive designer goods: There isn't much to feel unless you consider "like three million bucks" a feeling. But besides the Girbaud jeans with hologram straps and reflectors, the Margielas with no laces, the Escada and Balenciaga and Audemars Piguet, there's a lot going on in Rocky's head.

Late-album track "Suddenly" bears a co-producing credit from "Lord Flacko," aka Rocky himself. In it, a drumless vocal sample fights its way to the surface through layers of aquatic muffling, teasing a titanic beat-drop that keeps not arriving. The song is almost all intro: When the beat finally hits, it only lingers for a few bars before disappearing again. Over this master class in tension and release, Rocky summons childhood memories in calm, expansive strokes: "Everybody have roaches, but our roaches ain't respect us," he cracks, flashing a previously unseen storytelling flair: "We had cookouts and dirt bikes and dice games and fist fights/ And fish fries and shootouts like one Sig with two rounds/ In one clip, left two down, that's four kids/ But one lived, left three dead but one split/ That one missed, that one snitched." The song is a forceful reminder of his birthplace and heritage.

Rocky’s New York story has partly been a story of how there is no coherent New York story anymore: Bay Area rappers like the Jacka convincingly channel the gray Queensbridge fatalism of Mobb Deep and Cormega while in Harlem, Rocky soaked up styles happening hundreds of miles away-- Houston screw music, UGK, Bone Thugs. But beneath the 90s-baby trappings, Rocky is a certain breed of Harlem rapper incarnate-- flashy, ambitious, and affably determined to cross over. The flamboyance and singsong rhyme patterns of the Diplomats are an obvious primary color. But reaching further back, to another Harlemite with a deceptively catchy flow, agreeable air, and penchant for colorful clothing, and you find another kindred spirit in Ma$e. Like Ma$e, Rocky tucks steely edges behind a goofy smile. He has the same unerring instinct for balancing pop smarts and street edge and a similar disregard for New York orthodoxy. He’s also consistently dismissed as a lightweight. It's true, Rocky may not be the answer to New York rap's savior complex. But he is undeniably a hit-maker and a major new rap star for a city that sorely needs one. And with LongLiveA$AP, he's beaten expectations twice.