Jamel Phillips, better known as A$AP Twelvyy, joined up with A$AP Yams around 2006, which makes him one of the Mob’s earliest members. Yams had put out a call for young rappers willing to work with him, and Twelvyy answered, impressed by Yams’ precociously eclectic taste. A proud New Yorker and a middling rapper, Twelvyy appeared on plenty of A$AP posse tracks and various loosies for the better part of the last decade. But his debut album was nowhere in sight even before Yams’ death in 2015. The passing hit Twelvyy hard, and the LP is only now emerging in a month that will also see a new mixtape from A$AP Ferg and A$AP Mob’s new album.
That Twelvyy has eagerly mentioned these other projects in several interviews is a good indicator of his personality on the mic. On 12, a solid collection of gangster-lite rap tracks, he is never more appealing than when he’s reflecting on moments of brotherly love, or tossing off little snippets of local history. He favors sentimental, almost sappy beats that pair nicely with his fond remembrances of crew life and rarely stray from the hazy A$AP sound. There’s a minute-long skit that is dedicated entirely to a recollection of a Mob gathering in which old Ron G and Brucie B tapes were played and plenty of purple was puffed, recalled as if it were a lost paradise. The A$AP Mob has long been synonymous with Harlem swagger but it’s difficult to recall another project that wears its love for the city’s past so proudly. Twelvyy sounds most at home on tracks like “Ea$TSideGho$T” and “Sunset Park,” nostalgia-brushed pictures of New York neighborhoods where his reflexive comfort with gangster-rap tropes is burnished by the specifics of his own experience.
But inconsistency plagues the record, as Twelvyy’s character too often disappears from view. The opening lines of “Castle Hell” paint a portrait of a kid whose innocence was shattered by the violence from which his parents sought to protect him, but the song quickly turns generic, a vague tableau of guns and bloodshed in which it’s not quite clear where Jamel Phillips fits. He has no problem supplying stray details in his verses, randomly recalling various shootings on “Strapped,” or on “Diamonds,” when he remembers that, at some point, he earned the nickname Diddy. These could be points of entry, but Twelvyy declines to elaborate, turning them into non sequiturs, stories waiting to be told in full.
Much of the time, his energy outmatches his rudimental lyricism, particularly when the songs feature his A$AP Family, whose styles he frequently adopts as his own. On the bop-indebted “Hop Out,” which features Ferg, he beats the Hood Pope at his own game, his enthusiasm boosting the song up a couple of levels. “Diamonds,” with Rocky, conveys the stoned, youthful vibe of the crew’s earliest days, with Twelvyy swagger-jacking an early iteration of Flacko’s flow. On the chorus of “Periodic Table” he shouts out collectives that came before A$AP—“I was brought up by them block boys, them heat-makers and them hot boys”—and you can hear the glee in his voice.
Yams is remembered fondly throughout the record, and the lyrics of album closer “Brothers” are raw with the pain of his absence. Twelvyy’s deep affection for his visionary friend—and the environment he created—is obvious. Yams had the kind of insight and understanding to elevate an everyman rapper like Twelvyy, highlighting his particular gifts along the way. Without him, 12 feels adrift. It’s charming in its evocation of friendship, but when the rest of the group falls away, Twelvyy struggles to break out of a mold that’s already cracking from age.
