“Punk Rocky” by ASAP Rocky: Effortlessly thrown off track by reality

EIt’s particularly tragic that this new, sensational music video by rapper A$AP Rocky was released in the same week that an ICE immigration officer shot an apparently innocent woman in the head in Minneapolis. Not because the reality here contradicts pop art and exposes it as a frothy idyll. But because the events once again show horribly how quickly one perceives even the most grotesque productions as understated. How social suspicion and aggressive legal opinions are increasingly taking on proportions that effortlessly push even the darkest hero comics off the sharp right.

Although, and this further strengthens the effect, ASAP Rocky’s “Punk Rocky” does not present itself as a politically moistened work of art at all – unlike 2025 cinema films such as “One Battle After Another” or “Bugonia”, to which the findings outlined also apply. The New York rapper was last in discussion in 2024 with the video hit “Tailor Swif,” a surrealistic revue filmed by the Israeli duo Vania & Muggia with car-driving bulldogs and toilets falling from the sky. Which only became contemporary relevant in the last shot. A notice appeared that the shooting had taken place in Kiev in 2021.

The artist has now staged the video for “Punk Rocky” himself, with the Dutch Folkert Verdoorn and Simon Becks, who are only known to insiders. As a real-life cartoon, which is based on drawn slapsticks by Tex Avery or Hanna-Barbera, but is populated by real people. For example, Winona Ryder, who was chronically underemployed in the last season of “Stranger Things”, now in the role of the nice suburban neighbor.

What does pop have to do right now? Exposing emotional stupidity, but at the same time formulating utopias

She sympathizes with the Hallodri gang around ASAP Rocky, who celebrate harmless parties next door. While her life partner, a Marvel monster crossed with a late Mickey Rourke, Schreckmichel feels threatened by the goings-on. He suspects illegals in the garage, calls the police, and has the heads of the neighbors – all black – bang on the hood to the rhythm of the stoned, melancholic song. After Ryder temporarily ransoms those imprisoned for no reason with a bag of comic money, there is a confrontation between Rocky and the hateful opponent. As is often the case in cartoons, a funny ejection seat helps with escape. Nevertheless, “The End” shot, a still image of the smashed car window as if taken from a lost smartphone, is extremely dark for a hip-hop video.

“Punk Rocky” is so interesting because ASAP Rocky tries with dedication to keep the balancing act that pop has to do in these times: to be clever, to expose emotional stupidity, but at the same time to formulate utopias and never let the sometimes decadent-seeming subject position be stolen from you. How much it still cuts to your core when you watch it says a lot about the present. Rocky’s album will be released next week, perhaps the next inspiration. Its title: “Don’t Be Dumb.”