A$AP Ferg’s New Home-Town Anthem with Cam’ron, “Rubber Band Man”

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On his new album, “Still Striving,” the Harlem rapper A$AP Ferg finally gets a chance to collaborate with Cam’ron, of Dipset.Photograph by Madison McGaw / BFA / REX / Shutterstock

Earlier this month, A$AP Ferg, a member of the Harlem rap collective A$AP Mob, released the remix of “East Coast,” a throbbing panegyric to New York City. The title of the song is somewhat misleading; listeners might assume that the track will be another salvo in the decades-old “war” between East and West Coast rappers. These days, though, rappers from all over the country have set aside long-held regional beefs to collaborate on the same song; “East Coast” is a nod to this new era of amity. “I love the East,” Ferg raps. “But shout out to every coast, brah / South to North and even West Coast, brah.”

The song includes verses by Rick Ross, French Montana, and Busta Rhymes, but the most notable contribution is from Snoop Dogg, the archetypal West Coast rapper. “Me and Ferg, we gon’ put in work / Bang on ya’ gang culture, out of this world,” the forty-five-year-old raps. As Snoop and Ferg trade lines as the song closes, any rivalry that may have signalled animus in the past now brings to mind the sort of respectful competition that one expects to see between worthy challengers. It’s as if there were finally more than enough success in the rap world to go around.

The track that most resembles a home-town anthem on the new album, “Still Striving,” would be “Rubber Band Man,” the second song, and one of the strongest. On it, Ferg tag-teams with Cam’ron, of Dipset, the predecessor of A$AP Mob. “Working with Killa Cam was crazy, because I always looked up to him growing up in Harlem and we finally got a chance to get a song in,” Ferg told me in an e-mail. The lyrics exude the kind of casual swagger that only the best rappers are able to master: “Rubber Band man got the pocket with the bankroll / Call me Stunna Man, diamonds shining like the rainbow / Runnin’ this shit, you can call me Usain Bolt.” Rap music today may be a more gentlemanly sport than it was two decades ago, but the hustle lives on.