A$AP Rocky Couldn’t Be Happier

his chest. The tagline? “Grow up. Get a job.”

Suffice to say, Rocky’s done both of those things since then, and then some—and he’s got even more on deck. This week, he’s announcing a new collaboration between Mercedes and his creative agency, AWGE, on a gender-neutral collection of revamped streetwear and lifestyle pieces. This summer, he’ll be hitting the festival circuit once again. Oh, and he and his girlfriend Rihanna are expecting their first child. As Rocky tells me, speaking from New York on Tuesday, “Man, I couldn’t be more happier.”

For the capsule collab, Rocky and his team wanted to play on the cultural significance of Mercedes-Benz iconography in hip-hop and in New York fashion. Indeed, logomania was born in Harlem in the ’80s by way of Dapper Dan, the legendary designer who spun his signature luxury-label “knockups” out of his atelier on 125th Street, in turn originating fashion’s monogram obsession as we know it. Not to mention that Rocky, born Rakim Mayers, and his older sister, Erika B. Mayers, were named after the New York DJ/MC duo Eric B. & Rakim, beloved not only for their music but also for their prime hip-hop-golden-age uniforms of logoed-out Dapper Dan duds and icey Mercedes star logo chains. Growing up, “we would go to 125th Street or downtown, and you would always find bootleg Mercedes-Benz logos and whatnot,” Rocky says. “It correlates to my life in so many ways.”