Rocky spent a great deal of time recording in London—his home away from home—and Berlin, where he finished the album. “The energy there is crazy,” he says. “I feel like Berlin still has a big appreciation for hip-hop culture. The architecture, you still see graffiti everywhere, like real artists and real art, cobblestone roads. There’s nothin’ wrong with just taking that all in. It was perfect.”

Berlin was so perfect, in fact, that he got to spend time with some of his “favorite” people—MGMT, Dave Chappelle, Mos Def, Kanye West. His face still lights up now as he thinks back to the experience. While he won’t go into detail, he says he and Kanye worked on “a lot of music” together, including some intended for Testing. “Kanye turned the hotel we were staying at into a Yeezy compound,” he says. “He was designing sneakers in one suite, making music in one suite, and I was making music in my suite. It was crazy. We shut down the whole hotel.”

He’s eager to let fans hear the new music. “It’s an experience,” he says. “It’s jiggy. It’s lit. I’m tryna go platinum first week. Let’s get it. On some Cardi B shit times 12, you heard?”

He can’t be bothered by all the other silly shit, like questions about who stole his style—a question that’s followed him for his entire career. Just a week before our first sit-down at the studio in Brooklyn, Funk Flex tweeted, “Bunch of rappers stole Asap Rocky’s swag! Think they slick!” He followed it up with: “Oh? U want names? First name: Travis Scott !!! Who else y’all think?” Rocky responded to Flex’s original tweet with a simple statement: “FLVCKO FACT.”

Asked about it now, he’s visibly irritated that we’re still talking about it. “I don’t even think people stealing my style matters at this point,” he says, raising his voice. “I’m too old to be talking about who stole my style and who ran with… I don’t give a fuck about that. I’m just trying to make dope music, dope art, dope clothing creations. And I wanna mess with some dope females, if you know any. That’s it. Other than that all this other shit is other shit. You feel me?”

But do you feel like you are being appreciated or acknowledge for the things you have influenced?

“Yes,” he says flatly. “I’m so blessed to be here. I could be dead right now. I could be in jail. I could be poor. I could be homeless still. But I’m here and I’m talking to you, stoned, happy as ever. Y’know what I’m saying? I’m lucky to be doing what I’m doing, in the capacity that we do it in. We’re blessed. Never get that confused. I don’t think I would be sitting here after seven years of doing this, and doing a cover for Complex, if I wasn’t acknowledged for the stuff I did. I really do it for my trophies, and my trophies is those people who come up to you on the street who don’t want a picture but wanna tell you how you changed their life, or how a decision you did influenced their decisions in life, or just how much they appreciate you. That’s my Grammy, that’s my Oscar, that’s my everything. I’m just trying to show kids how to make it on their own without having to do the same old thing. And you could be yourself while doing this.”

Once again, at the end of our interview, Rocky pulls my notecards to flip the script and ask me questions. He wants to know my opinion of the new music I’d just heard, how he’s changed from “Peso” to “A$AP Forever,” what I look for in music. Music in general, not just his own. He’s dialed in, and very clearly genuinely cares about how I answer. It’s not the posture of someone who doesn’t care, deeply, about the work he’s putting into the world.

“I’m always gon’ do what I want when it comes to making music and shit,” he says. “I feel like to an extent, you gotta give a fuck.” He pauses, squints, and then hold his thumb and pointer finger a little ways apart.

“But maybe just a little bit.”