Two years ago, New York’s Ratking emerged from the Odd Future furore with their ‘Wiki93’ EP (listen on Deezer) and the disaffected potential of their skate-rap angst. Today, they’re delivering material to separate themselves from any opposite-coast comparisons.
A melting pot of early ’90s hometown rap, punk and no wave, ‘So It Goes’ delivers on the promise they exhibited early on, successfully paying homage to NYC’s biggest hip-hop hitters, navigating busy, broken rhythms, and throwing up fresh perspectives with hazy, boom-bap production.
An album forged to a backdrop of the Big Apple’s steaming sewers and graffiti-daubed streets, the ever-morphing beats, and co-MC Wiki’s zipping, syllable-mashing delivery ensure that when ‘Take’ and ‘Canal’ woozily space out, the all-action energy of tracks like ‘Protein’ pull you straight back in.
7/10
Words: Reef Younis
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Related: read our interview with Ratking.
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