At a time when so many young, emerging New York City rappers are eagerly presenting themselves as a sum of their classic New York rap influences, Ratking have generated attention by trying to represent something different. Bursting onto the scene with rabble-rousing gusto and a reputation for wild live shows, teenage MCs Wiki and Hak (of the Upper West Side and Harlem, respectively) and Harlem-based producer Sporting Life aim to revitalize the reckless spirit of classic New York rap.
From the title of their full-length debut So It Goes—a Kurt Vonnegut reference that doubles as commentary on whether hip-hop is dead—to the album's nearly-exclusive focus on New York as a muse, it's impossible to misinterpret Ratking's stance on the constant conversation that runs through hip-hop culture. “This ain't 90s revival/ It's earlier, it's tribal revival,” Wiki raps on “Protein”, a disorienting song with an insistent MIDI tone driving the beat, a lengthy instrumental break in the middle, some understated singing, and a lot of disembodied yelling. Above all, Ratking's palette is restless, chaotic, and cluttered, and accordingly So It Goes sounds like it exists in its own world.
It's an album tied inescapably to its urban setting, with snippets of voices and the dings of closing subway doors drifting around under the clanging instrumentation. Sporting Life's instrumentation crackles with energetic drum-machine patterns and digital washes of noise, but the sound of So It Goes is never too harsh, with soulful backing vocals and meandering horns that offer an underlying warmth, particularly on the languorous highlight “Snow Beach”. The contributions of engineer and Jay-Z associate Young Guru (again, the New York lineage here is solid) are valuable, too: while previous Ratking recordings occasionally sounded claustrophobic because of the chaos' collision with the dense jumble of lyrics, So It Goes sounds spacious and clear.
The increase in clarity includes Wiki and Hak's rapping. Wiki first attracted attention as an MC due to his dense, rapid-fire delivery, and both rappers have a gift for freewheeling, tangled flows. However, their presence is satisfying on a basic level, too, breaking from the anti-expressiveness that often comes with such lyrical recitations. Hak often gives his rhymes a physical depth, creating a percussive effect through heavy alliteration, while the more ebullient Wiki yells and repeats short phrases like the singer of a hardcore band. These phrases echo and ring out like proclamations: “The earth is fucked, the city is gone!”, “The city implodes with the prettiest prose!” “20 degrees outside! We're toasted in the tunnel!” Much of So It Goes isn't as concerned with following traditional rap structures as it is with creating rich panoramas.
There isn't anything here that's trying for pop accessibility (unless you count King Krule's singing on the excellent downer anthem “So Sick Stories”), and So It Goes drags a little toward the end, especially with regards to the title track's new-agey ramblings, so the constant noise and loose structure can feel oppressive. Where Ratking dives deepest, then—the police harassment protest song “Remove Ya” and “Snow Beach”, which addresses NYU's gradual takeover of New York's downtown and paints a rich lyrical portrait—the payoff is greatest, proving that Wiki and Hak are perceptive observers. There's a pulsing, lived-in energy to So It Goes that captures what New York feels like and pushes at the boundaries of lyrically-driven rap. Beyond conversations about their city or genre, Ratking's greatest success is confidently offering a sound that feels untethered from expectations and bristles with the exhilarating energy of trying something new.
