Potato Salad

It's difficult to imagine the A$AP Rocky and Tyler, the Creator of even two years ago making a song as loose, funny, and relaxed as “Potato Salad.” But the two have grown in unpredictable directions—Tyler is warm, empathetic, and reflective on record these days, and A$AP Rocky seems oddly freed from expectations that he would become an international superstar. The song is just two freestyles paired over an old Kanye beat—Monica’s “Knock Knock”—but its unguarded goofiness is a joy.
Rocky sounds spontaneous and conversational, two qualities I’ve never once associated with him; he even gets off a little disparaging joke about “mumble rap” and insists not once, but twice, that his designer bag is “not a purse, it’s a satchel.” Tyler, for his part, makes a bunch of puns based off the old Playstation controller, talks about buying “Comme blouses,” and packing houses with “some Leo Dicaps and some Cole Sprouses.” Paired with the silliness of the video, in which the two of them clown around in front of the Eiffel Tower—“I have nothing cool to do,” Tyler cracks as he runs up on the camera—the chilly hipster patina that has built up around the two of them scrapes away. Playing with fancy toys and wearing colorful clothes is, among other things, a way to have fun, and “Potato Salad” taps into that guileless spirit.