Creating “real New York rap” is an elusive goal for any rapper hailing from the five boroughs. It is an ephemeral label that exists somewhere between an unspoken respect and influence from hip hop forefathers and an ability to innovate. Drawing inspiration from the fickle apple requires a deft eye for aesthetics, a concrete authenticity and an unfaltering attitude — the ability to present truth like undeniable grit with an enduring loyalty. So It Goes, the debut album from the Harlem rap collective Ratking — consisting of rappers Wiki and Hak and producers Sporting Life and Ramon — succeeds on this frontier with large doses of political energy, youthful excitement brimming with wisdom, poetry, skill and a sense of New York that has not been represented by other acclaimed contemporary New York rappers (like Action Bronson, Joey Bada$$, ASAP Rocky, Aaron Cohen or Flatbush Zombies).
So It Goes is not drug rap, tourist rap or braggadocio rap — and it is not a simple love letter. It has been contaminated by stark honesty and paranoia. Hak raps like a poet, drawing imagistic juxtapositions between a transcendental immersion into urban beauty with underlying decay and violence. Wiki, the true prophet of the collective, raps with a meandering, disjointed flow that masks nothing with metaphor. His wordplay claws at the heart of the city, revealing police brutality, racism, forceful gentrification, bureaucratic corruption and the inexplicable love for New York that endures regardless.
In the first track of the album, “*,” Wiki divulges the common fear that comes with the impending end of adolescence — begging the question, as a first song should, “What’s next?” But he answers this uncertainty by finding solace in music —
“Crammed up in a room trying to jam: That’s the raw, that’s the God, that’s the all, that’s the fam.”
Ratking claims to seek punk aesthetics in their hip-hop music, but they remain self-conscious, endlessly analytical and fret throughout their verses, using words like “hurried taxis” and “swarming ants.” Though the voices ache at times, the result is a concoction that mostly consists of confidence, eloquence and urgency.
“Canal,” the catchiest song on the album, draws influence from Aphex Twin, utilizing a sample that recalls the pornographic inspiration for their song, “Window Licker.” This direct normalization of sex lends a hand to the candid atmosphere of the album. It is, quite frankly, vulgar at times, unafraid to force a verse out even if it means someone will get a little spit spewed on them.
“Snow Beach,” the most comprehensive representation of Ratking in one cohesive song, glides through various stages. Beginning with Hak’s soul-inflected, crooning interlude that could have been produced and written by Panda Bear, the song heaves itself from a ledge into a reverberating swell of horns and crowded oblivion. The sample at first resembles MF Doom’s quintessentially New York instrumental, “Arrow Root,” because of the prominent use of saxophone and a similar rhythm. The track, however, quickly strays into a macabre waltz, a spectral jazz that is less nostalgia and more perdition. Wiki strains himself:
“Infecting the apple, a cancer in its heart: Why’d you make a campus out of the park? / If it keeps spreading, it’ll be dead, panting and parched / How you supposed to be standing for New York, dismantling New York? / The apple is rot.”
Wishing for the protection of a city on the brink of having its integrity destroyed by gentrification, Wiki maintains, “I ain’t trying to threaten your ways, judge you, or get in debates, but I’m spitting so I get to explain.”
A call for action through art, Ratking exposes and reveals, but the question remains: Is it enough to just draw attention? Where is the real action? What form should it take? This urgent call for active spectators to answer these questions, rather than for the harboring of idle listeners, would warm Bertolt Brecht’s heart. Wiki points out in the song “Protein”: “While you shit in a toilet, I spit.”
This active political charge surges throughout the album, and though it can be heavy-handed, it retains its potency.
“So Sick Stories,” the first single from the album, features British singer King Krule delivering a classically Krule-ian verse describing mystical urban apparitions in grayscale, floating between concrete and mist in a blissful manner. King Krule shows off his hip hop virtuoso side with precision on this song, seeming at home between Hak, the poet and Wiki, the rogue town crier.
The track “Remove Ya” addresses the controversial stop-and-frisk laws in New York, sampling the audio track from a video that went viral, in which a policeman uses racial slurs and unprompted violence against an innocent mixed-race man. This poignant and timely social critique pushes Ratking further into the politically savvy spotlight under which they belong as true New Yorkers that are on the front lines of corruption affecting the daily lives of mixed-raced teenagers.
“Puerto Rican Judo” recalls the Factory Records-style of club music coined by the Manchester label and groups like the Happy Mondays, flaunting a vast array of influence that results in something unique. Wiki raps in the song “Protein”: “This ain’t ‘90s revival, it’s earlier, it’s tribal revival.”
Conceptually, Ratking aims to distance itself from the now cliché, overdone attempt to revive ‘90s hip hop. In some ways they succeed — the end result of their amalgam of influence is something uniquely Ratking. However, it would be false to say that they in no way revive ‘90s hip hop aesthetics and attitudes. Over the glitch-driven beat of “Protein,” Wiki feeds into a nihilistic attitude in the face of oppression, rapping blatantly: “The earth is f***ed, the city is gone.”
Yet he perseveres: “My will’s to write a verse that’s ill enough to get you filled, keep you strong, make sure you keep keeping on.”
The largest problem with the album is the general absence of Hak, or at least Wiki’s complete overshadowing of Hak. Many times, Hak’s flow leaves something to be desired, his lyrics seem comparatively fluffy and he comes across as lazily obscure or verbose. He only shines on the song “Bug Fights,” which is most memorable for his sudden prominence, volume and glaring metamorphosis. He remains generally uninteresting until this point, however.
“Don’t let what life taught you taunt you, embrace it now,” he urges. Unfortunately, he fails to fully regard his own advice.
“Six million trains to ride, choose one. / Six million stories to tell, whose one?” Wiki raps in the title song.
This quagmire of possibilities is synthesized into a successful, albeit sometimes disjointed, inconsistent and experimentally ambitious, album. Like the phenomenon after which they are named, Ratking’s music is tangled and abrasive, but no other recent album has been as striking an example of real New York rap.
