A$AP Rocky has gone Hollywood and isn’t looking back.
If the rapper’s latest album collaborations with Tim Burton, appearances in A24 films “Highest 2 Lowest” and “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” and an upcoming Tribeca award weren’t enough of a red-carpet rollout, his latest action-packed tour is his full jump-ship moment, where the word blockbuster comes to mind.
The hip-hop visionary has always been one to build worlds and squeeze creative juice out of escapism, but his new “Don’t Be Dumb” Tour takes it to a whole new level. In the first few minutes of opening night in Chicago on Wednesday, there was a succession of flashbang fireworks, two helicopters (doubling up the rapper’s go-to prop), bright searchlights and blinding reds and blues, loud alarm sound effects and a 50-person backup crew dressed as a militarized SWAT team that took over the United Center.
Adding to it was the fact that the rapper started the show — late per usual — up in the nosebleeds, riffing the first three songs while “detained” near staged metal detectors, giving the 300 section the best seats in the house for a few. “We designed this show so every view is the perfect view, no matter where you at,” he later shared. To his point, every corner of the arena felt caught up in the melee. The hijinks were so realistic that it necessitated a disclaimer on the arena’s lobby screens assuring ticket holders the individuals dressed in riot gear were, in fact, actors.
Was it too soon for such a visceral recreation of the painful realities many people are facing in present-day America? Maybe. But A$AP Rocky also seemed to have a point to make and he did so loudly, couching his microphone within a megaphone for extra effect.
While the world waited eight long years for Rocky to release his “Don’t Be Dumb” album, the world (and his world) also changed in that time. The rapper became a father to three young children (“Shout out to all my kids, I love y’all,” he said Wednesday). He received invitations into elite acting and fashion circles. But it was also concurrent with the Black Lives Matter movement that grew in the wake of the death of teenager Michael Brown, who was fatally shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, and police brutality that has disproportionately affected communities of color, data shows.
The rapper seems to drive that point home in the album and tour aesthetics, with references to police, Jim Crow and inequality, particularly on songs like the solemn “The End.” As the police team zeroed in on their suspect at the UC, video screens carried a faux livestream of the action while the rapper evaded it in a mid-stage compound set up with surveillance cameras and upside American flags, near banners that read, “Big Brother is Always Watching.”
Naturally, much of the set focused on “Don’t Be Dumb” and these themes, also including solid performances of the diss track “Stole Ya Flow” and feral rave song “STFU” alongside more playful material like “Stay Here 4 Life” about his partner Rihanna, who was spotted in the crowd. There were also special guests Tommy Revenge and Thoto on “American Sabotage” and covers of A$AP’s feature tracks like Ty Dolla $ign’s “December 31st.” A performance of Chicago rapper Famous Dex’s “Pick It Up” was also done as a “special one” for this night. But Rocky was also in the mood to throw it back to his earliest material, with fan faves like “Praise the Lord (Da Shine)” and “Everyday,” and going all the way back to his days with the A$AP Mob collective on “Telephone Calls” and “Yamborghini High.” For the latter, he asked for a moment of silence in remembrance of A$AP Yams, who died in 2015.
In total, the night was an epic marathon barreling through nearly 40 career-spanning songs over two hours and going slightly past the 11 p.m. curfew. “They trying to cut me off! F— that, we’ll take the fine!” the rapper declared, recalling his messy set at Lollapalooza last summer that was also dogged by late starts and creative snafus. There were a few of those at United Center too, with Rocky tongue-lashing his crew at one point about spotlight placement and in-ear audio issues. “Let’s get this mother—– right because these people paid good money to see my Black a– tonight,” he clapped back in a power move that shows A$AP Rocky is still that same whip-smart, Harlem-born talent with plenty of cutthroat material and vanguard vibes. But with the “Don’t Be Dumb” album and tour, he’s also shown time has made him even wiser and better at his craft.
A$AP Rocky set list for May 27, 2026, show at United Center in Chicago
Grim Freestyle
Trunks
Highjack
Order Of Protection
Helicopter
Stole Ya Flow
SWAT Team
Praise the Lord (Da Shine)
A$AP Forever
Tailor Swif
Riot (Rowdy Pipe’n)
No Trespassing
Stop Snitching
Playa
Stfu
Punk Rocky
Sundress
American Sabotage (with Tommy Revenge and Thoto)
December 31ST (Ty Dolla $ign song, with Tommy Revenge and Thoto)
Ballerina (with Tommy Revenge and Thoto)
Gemstones Itz Tha Grim (with Tommy Revenge and Thoto)
No Limit (G‐Eazy song)
R. Cali
Telephone Calls (A$AP Mob song)
Pick It Up (Famous Dex song)
Fukk Sleep
Multiply
Yamborghini High (A$AP Mob song)
Purple Swag
Peso
LVL
Wassup
Fashion Killa
Everyday
Long.Live.A$AP
Stay Here 4 Life
L$D
Don’t Be Dumb
Lord Pretty Flacko Jodye 2