in january 2018, the album's album title was cryptically left under soundcloud song descriptions, until being officially confirmed in may 2018. in an interview with "gq", rocky stated: "my new album is really about testing new sounds. people are scared to test new sounds, so they go with what's current 'cause it's the easy thing to do. the top 100 songs sound a certain way. people cater more to that because it's a bigger demographic behind that, or it's a guaranteed demographic behind that. i prefer to experiment and have my crowd grow with me and to reach new crowds. i don't just rap—i actually make music. that's why it takes time. these sonics represent me."