When A$AP Rocky dropped his third studio album, TESTING, some people thought the title was a direct reference to the way he’d approached its sound: He’s testing new stuff. I, on the other hand, thought the name of the record suggested something deeper: This is just a little something before I drop the real album. But TESTING wasn’t a test. It ended up being the album.
Take Mike White, whose latest work I’m sure you’re familiar with: The White Lotus. There’s something he said during the promotion of the show’s third season that kept me pushing through the loose plotlines he was offering us this time around: “I do feel like the other seasons were a rehearsal for this one.”
If the first two were just trials, tests, then this third release was meant to be it. The real thing. The magnum opus. This is funny because, to me, the tests (what White called a rehearsal) were far superior. The testing is always the best and freshest part. And if you go back to his pre-White Lotus projects (Enlightened or Chuck and Buck are great examples), it confirms my theory even further and with nuance.
Does this mean our “tests” or “trials” are our better (or at least freshest) works?