Over the weekend, unfortunate news surfaced that medical examiners ruled Steven Rodriguez death as an accidental death caused by drug intoxication. When asked about that question, Rocky quickly clarified that Yams death was caused by suffocation of his own vomit — due to sleep apnea.
I’ve included a piece of A$AP Rocky’s recent interview with the New York Times:
Last summer, Yams went to rehab after a plane ride that had gone very poorly. Debilitatingly high, he had to be pushed in a wheelchair when he got off the plane. “He looked like Pac when Pac got shot,” Rocky said, invoking Tupac Shakur’s 1994 shooting at Quad Studios in New York. “I hated to see him like that. That was it, man. It was like, ‘You got to go to rehab.’ ”
The night of Yams’s death, Rocky was one of several friends hanging out in the Williamsburg, Brooklyn, apartment Yams shared with ASAP Lou, another member of the crew. At around 3 a.m., Lou pulled him aside and told him something was wrong.
Yams wouldn’t wake up, and there was vomit on the bed. They turned him over. “I just look at his face. I look at Lou. You could just tell. We knew,” Rocky said. “I was scared,” he said. “I was wilding on everybody, like, ‘Who let him do drugs?,’ even though you can’t blame nobody.”
(The office of New York City’s chief medical examiner ruled the death an accident caused by acute mixed drug intoxication, including opiates and benzodiazepine. A spokeswoman declined to elaborate on the specific drugs found in his system.)
They all went to Woodhull Medical Center, where Rocky was met by his ex-girlfriend, the model Chanel Iman. “They were tight,” he said. “She really took it hard, man. She was crying more than me.”
WATCH:
BONUS: After revealing some details about his forthcoming LP, A$AP Rocky opens up once again on Yams’ passing w/ VIBE.
“I was outside in the car — in the sprinter van,” A$AP Rocky says. “Nobody knew I was there. I just went to the burial in the snow. It was a snowstorm. That shit was disgusting outside. Damn near a blizzard.”
