Feature//: Three Reasons We're Thankful for the Late @ASAPYAMS

We're stuffing our faces with a different type of yams this year. In celebration of Thanksgiving, Broke2dope.com wants to give thanks this year to a visionary and "spirit guide" of hip hop, A$AP YAMS. Steven "YAMS" Rodriquez, would have celebrated his 28th birthday on November 13th. The co-founder of the A$AP Mob died January 2015 to an accidental drug overdose, but his legend remains. Here's a few reasons why we're grateful for the A$AP Yams this Thanksgiving.

"Yams was like a mystery," Rocky said of Yams' mythic stature in the Harlem hip-hop community.  "He was like the Great Gatsby." - New York Times

ASAP Mob

Yams is a cofounder of the hip hop collective A$AP Mob and spearheaded the success of the group when they first came onto the scene in New York. Since meeting in 2007, Yams and A$AP Rocky worked as a team to propel their label ASAP Worldwide as well as Rocky's career launched by the Live.Love.ASAP mixtape. Now, ASAP Mob, consisting of Ferg, Twelvy, Nast, and Ant, is now a prominent group within hip hop. As a collective, the group released the Cozy Tapes Vol.1 to commemorate the death of their beloved leader Yams featuring the track "Yamborgini High'. The album is available on iTunes and Apple Music.



YAMS was for the culture...

YAMS was known as a tastemaker in the industry and his blog "Real Nigga Tumblr" was a source of dope new content. Yams is often called a spirit guide of the hip hop industry and his pure charisma is what allowed him to maneuver and build his way up. YAMS also had a strong presence on Twitter, often coining new words such as "cozy". YAMS timeline is full of gems and appropriately the book Gems compiled by Ajani Braithwaite was released a year following YAMS death the commemorate YAMS's popular Twitter philosophies. 


Drug Use Awareness
With the news of YAM's passing, the use and misuse of drugs such as lean became a talking point in the industry again. In the past, artists such as Pimp C, also died from apparent drug use, but many are unaware of the dangers of mixing codeine with other drugs. YAMS mother, Tatianna Paulino, wrote an essay on Noisey.com detailing the night of her son's passing and how it led her to be educated on drug use. She stated that her son had a mixture of opiates and benzodiazepine in his toxicology report. In an effort to bring more awareness, the ASAP mob collective have started the A$AP Foundation to bring awareness to drug use and prevention.

Long Live A$AP YAMS!