A$AP Rocky Unveils Surreal ‘Punk Rocky’ Video Featuring Winona Ryder
A$AP Rocky has introduced the first fully immersive glimpse into the off-kilter universe of his forthcoming album Don’t Be Dumb with the release of a feverish new video for “Punk Rocky,” a visually dense, darkly comic short film that blurs romance, violence, and fantasy. The clip features appearances from Winona Ryder, Thundercat, and Danny Elfman, and leans heavily into a gothic, Burtonesque sensibility that signals a dramatic aesthetic pivot for the rapper.
Directed with a deliberately disorienting rhythm, the video opens on Ryder in a sun-bleached domestic tableau, reclining calmly on a plastic lounge chair while a hyper-masculine partner stalks the yard, shouting into a cellphone. The scene establishes the clip’s emotional imbalance early: Ryder appears detached, observational; the men around her are volatile, reactive, and perpetually on edge.
A$AP Rocky enters the frame shortly thereafter, emerging from a garage with hair curlers in place, before diving headfirst into a mosh pit that quickly turns violent. A punch lands squarely on his face, setting off a chain reaction that brings police sirens, arrests, and a nightmarish procession through holding cells and interrogation rooms. At several points, the camera lingers on ’s swollen, bruised eye, which, in one surreal flourish, appears to speak back the song’s lyrics, its eyelid flapping like a mouth.
Musically, “Punk Rocky” juxtaposes its abrasive imagery with vulnerability. “I wanna fall in love, don’t want no broken heart,” A$AP Rocky repeats in the chorus, framing the track less as rebellion than emotional exhaustion. That tension carries through the video, where moments of absurd tenderness, such as Ryder offering A$AP Rocky a plate of cookies, collide with escalating chaos. When her partner notices the interaction, the situation spirals again, sending back into police custody, where he raps behind bars and mockingly tosses cash toward an elderly lawyer.
The final act is pure delirium: A$AP Rocky sprints through city streets, fires a gun skyward, and is eventually flung through the rear window of a moving police car, only to reappear moments later in custody once more. In the outro, he leans fully into the metaphor of bruised intimacy: “You’re punch drunk in love, left me with a blackened eye,” he raps, framing emotional damage as both cyclical and self-inflicted.
The video’s visual language is unmistakably influenced by Tim Burton, who collaborated with A$AP Rocky on elements of Don’t Be Dumb’s artwork and an accompanying short film. Elfman’s presence, along with Ryder, a longtime Burton collaborator, further cements the connection. Burton has confirmed that Elfman contributed music to portions of the album, describing the project as one that allowed ’s multiple personas to exist simultaneously within a heightened, surreal frame.
According to press materials, the album’s cover art features six distinct versions of A$AP Rocky, each representing different phases of his career. Don’t Be Dumb arrives Jan. 16.
