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A$AP Mob Hits The Runway With Raf Simons

Rap's fashionable attack has come a long way since Russell Simmons had to cajole Adidas into cutting a check for Run-D.M.C.

When it comes to the intersection between hip-hop and high fashion today, no rapper alive has marketed himself as a walking billboard better than A$AP Rocky. He's risen from name-dropping bougie designers like Rick Owens and Raf Simons in his early career to walking the runway for luxury streetwear brand Hood By Air, releasing capsule collections with the likes of J.W. Anderson and becoming the newest face for Dior Homme as of last year.

In the new video for "RAF," featuring Playboi Carti and Quavo of Migos, he extends his distinction for taste to his Harlem crew A$AP Mob. A tribute to Simons, Calvin Klein's current creative director, the visual is ripped straight from the runway, with Rocky and company modeling limited-edition pieces from the Raf Simmons archive. The song, which debuted on Frank Ocean's Beats 1 radio show in May, also features Ocean and Lil Uzi Vert, though both fail to make an appearance in the closet raid.

The video's release comes with news of A$AP Mob's 20-city fall tour, starting Sept. 23, and a reminder of A$AP Twelvyy's forthcoming debut, 12, set for August 4.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Rodney Carmichael is NPR Music's hip-hop staff writer. An Atlanta-bred cultural critic, he helped document the city's rise as rap's reigning capital for a decade while serving on staff as music editor, culture writer and senior writer for the defunct alt-weekly Creative Loafing.