The photos will feel familiar to anybody who follows ASAP Rocky.
The rapper/actor/brand-endorser extraordinaire, strides forth from a black SUV, wearing immaculate designer clothes and blacked out Ray-Bans, with a Bogart-like flair.
In some of these shots, Rocky wears a $4,000 Saint Laurent trench coat and crimson tie, in others he wears a vast Gucci cashmere coat, despite Los Angeles’s temperate climes. He’s flanked by thickset bodyguards and steps toward the camera looking self-assured and placid.
We’ve seen similar paparazzi shots of Rocky many times before — as he wades to the front row of a fashion show, or accompanies his wife Rihanna to dinner.
The setting, however, for this latest slew of Rocky photos, is the Los Angeles County Superior Court house.
For more than a week, the rapper, born Rakim Mayers, has arrived at this boxy judicial edifice to stand trial on two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm, stemming from a 2021 altercation with his former collaborator ASAP Relli, born Terell Ephron.
And through it all, there’s unflappable Rocky, looking as if he marched off a billboard. In his designer suits, and spit-shined shoes, he looks exactly as we’ve come to expect from a man who modeled for Gucci, walked in a Hood by Air show, was labeled “The Prettiest Man Alive bvz” by GQ and in June 2024 staged a Paris fashion show for his AWGE label. He’s expert at signing brand deals, having worked with Under Armour, Bottega Veneta, Gucci and Guess. He currently has a significant partnership with Puma, including $120 sneakers, a $200 sweatshirt and $175 sweatpants.
“Every picture, the styling is on point, his hair looks great, skin looks great,” said Sowmya Krishnamurthy, a music journalist and author of “Fashion Killa: How Hip-Hop Revolutionized High Fashion.”
There is a temptation here to read into these fashion choices — courtroom clothes are often carefully chosen to sway a jury. But this is also just how Rocky, whose image has, in many ways, come to eclipse his musical success, has presented himself in public for years.
And that is what makes these images so uncanny. We’re viewing Rocky in the highly-stylized way we’re accustomed to, but in a setting where focusing on his fashion choices risks downplaying the seriousness of his situation — where years in prison, not a spot on a best dressed list, is what is being adjudicated.
For the broader public, there’s a “wait, what?” feeling around the case and its potential career-halting implications.
Rocky was arrested in 2022 but was released on bond, meaning he was free to perform at concerts, attend fashion shows and model in fashion campaigns. Rocky’s case itself was originally scheduled for November but was postponed so he could headline the Rolling Loud music festival in Thailand. That he has been so public in the last few years has made the case recede, but the charges against Rocky remain serious.
He previously turned down a plea deal that would have landed him in jail for six months with a seven-year suspended sentence and three years of probation.
Video footage presented in the trial shows Rocky brandishing what appears to be a handgun. Rocky’s lawyer Joe Tacopina has argued that this was a “prop gun” incapable of firing real ammunition.
The trial-arrival photos are all the more brain scrambling when you recall that not long ago Rocky starred in a Bottega Veneta ad campaign meant to look like paparazzi shots.
“Throughout history, there has always been a funny relationship between photographers and celebrities,” wrote Rocky in an Instagram post displaying the campaign images, which captured him running in a gray sweatsuit, crossing the street in a denim shirt and carting flowers in an earthy trench.
It doesn’t take much imagination to see one of these suit-and-tie courthouse shots slotted in with the Bottega Veneta images. The line between past public persona and these current courthouse shots is so porous, all that’s missing is a logo.
This dissonance could be felt when, on Monday morning, and again on Tuesday, Saint Laurent sent an email to the press listing out its $1,100 derbies, $1,400 wool chiné pants, $1,650 satin piqué shirt and other garments that Rocky had worn recently, with accompanying photos. Where he had worn the Saint Laurent clothes went unmentioned.
Other brands though have stayed mum — no PR blast emails, no Instagram posts.
Ms. Krishnamurthy offered that in not turning away from Rocky, brands could be showing that they will remain supportive of the rapper — verdict notwithstanding.
“Maybe this is an indication that these brands truly do see him as a valued partner,” said Ms. Krishnamurthy.
There’s a precedent here: In 2019, the rapper was found guilty of assault in Stockholm and served over a month in a Swedish detention center. That trial did little to hamper his brand endorsements. What’s more, the charges against him were public long before this trial began and that didn’t stop labels from engaging with him.
Certainly, in the court of public opinion Rocky’s reputation seems intact. As one spectator hollered out in a video of Rocky getting to court on Feb. 3, “You look so handsome, like, always.”
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