After years of announcements and postponements, Don’t Be Dumb, the new album by A$AP Rocky, is finally out. The project pairs the rapper’s music with a visual component conceived by Tim Burton, with sound contributions by Danny Elfman.

The result is closer to an episodic film than to a traditional music video.

"It was the night before the release of Don't Be Dumb" begins the narrative voice.

"A cold draft through the door that made fingers go numb.
But rest assured, the whiskey was poured."

"A man with a sketchbook sat alone at the bar, not ordinary by far. However, I am certain that world-renowned Tim Burton had another genius idea on the tip of his tongue.

He couldn’t quite sketch it — he was sure he could get it — but this draft, of many drafts, was not quite the one."

"But alas, his eyelids grew heavy and an unexpected snooze.
What’s there to lose? Well, for starters, when one’s not looking, one’s ideas run loose."

"Out for the night, to give a good fright, these mischievous drawings started a riot of great fright"

Burton enters the scene directly, setting in motion a narrative in which the characters he drew come to life and move through New York City as out-of-place, deliberately artificial presences. They function as alter egos of A$AP Rocky, referencing different phases, attitudes, and moments in his career.

Burton’s aesthetic thus works less to celebrate the rapper’s public image than to dismantle it.

On the sound front, the record also comes at the end of a long process that began in 2022 and was completed only recently, following a series of previews released between 2024 and 2025. Among the contributors is Danny Elfman, a longtime collaborator of Tim Burton and the composer behind some of contemporary cinema’s most iconic soundtracks, including Edward Scissorhands, Batman, and The Nightmare Before Christmas.