Testing was met with generally positive reviews. At
Metacritic, which assigns a
normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an
average score of 67, based on eight reviews. Aggregator AnyDecentMusic? gave it 6.4 out of 10, based on their assessment of the critical consensus. Bansky Gonzalez of
Consequence gave a positive review, stating "It's a welcome addition to a genre that has become so occupied with spacey, bare-bones operations and overly simplistic results". Dean Van Nguyen of
The Guardian commented that
Testing is "completely out of step with any
mainstream rap album you're likely to hear this year", but "is a spottier affair" where "too many tracks minimise his strengths". Kassandra Guagliardi of
Exclaim! stated that the album is "A
shedding of the 29-year-old artist's old skin and a rebirth of something more profound and slightly more complicated", complimenting the album's
experimental aesthetic and identity. Andreas Hale of
Billboard complimented the album's experimentation but believed that ASAP Rocky is "still style over substance and his efforts at experimentation don't always click like he wants them to". Jake Boyer of
Highsnobiety acclaimed
Testing, labelling it "an absolute triumph. It does not have the earth-shattering impact of his
genre-defining debut, nor does it have any one track with as much immediacy as, say, a '
Fuckin' Problems', but it is unequivocally his most thoughtful, most ambitious, and most rewarding project to date", praising the album's production, experimentation, cohesion and guest appearances. Nina Hernandez of
The A.V. Club said, "Though the finished project is as loose and incohesive as its title might suggest, there's a lot to like about
Testing". In a mixed review, online hip hop publication
HipHopDX wrote that "There is no new movement birthed; there is no paradigm shift about the occur; it's simply as the title states: a series of harmonic evaluations meant to gauge audience reaction. Instead of creating a new wave, ASAP Rocky has drowned himself in his own ambitions and lost his identity along the way". Similarly, Stephen Kearse of
Pitchfork believed there to be flaws in the experimentation, writing: "Rocky is enamored with collision. His approach to songcraft on
Testing is to mash sounds together and capture the friction. The results are often dismal." Kevin Ritchie of
Now believed that "
Testings title might suggest experimentation, but it delivers more on tentativeness, with a smattering of solid songs mixed into aesthetically interesting but unresolved experiments", criticizing the lyricism and flows that "aren't as ambitious as the production". Fred Thomas also provided a mixed review for
AllMusic, stating that "While in some ways
Testing is more musical than anything we've heard from ASAP Rocky before, it's also more confused, with ideas and musical shifts colliding at times to the point of randomness. The album title itself refers to testing new sounds and pushing in new directions in hopes of growth. Like any set of experiments,
Testing offers some success, some failure, and some moments that can only be met with a blank stare. Though songs like the gorgeous
Frank Ocean collaboration '
Purity', or the darkly simmering '
Fukk Sleep' featuring
FKA Twigs, take risks that push ASAP Rocky to new, exciting territory, some of the experiments that made it onto
Testing could have been left bubbling over in the lab rather than weighing down the rest of the album".
Year-end lists ==Commercial performance==