A$AP Rocky has a pretty inflated image of himself: “Yes I’m the shit/Tell me, do I stink?” he raps in “Goldie,” the first single from his new album Long.Live.A$AP. As his major record label debut, Long.Live.A$AP must prove that A$AP lives up to his own hype. Ironically, however, it is often not A$AP himself who makes the album successful, but rather the people he enlists to flesh out his ideas.

As a rapper, Rocky still leaves much to be desired. His decent flow collapses under his shaky lyricism. Too often, there are lines egregious enough to pull the listener’s attention away from what might otherwise be a perfectly captivating song. Some lines are simply dumb (see first sentence), some are excessively juvenile (“She got drunk as fuck and swallowed all my kids in”), and some are irritatingly repetitious (all of “Fashion Killa”).

Thankfully, Rocky displays a keen taste for production. While Clams Casino still lends his hazy, ethereal style found on much of Rocky’s acclaimed Live.Love.A$AP mixtape to the tracks “LVL” and “Hell,” the album’s other producers range from Hit-Boy (of “Niggas in Paris” fame) to Skrillex (of “WUB WUB WUB” fame), keeping the record fresh and exciting throughout. A$AP generally displays a knack for working well with others—and this shows when in spite of his lyrical shortcomings he can release an album made up of interesting, and occasionally even great, songs.