Much is often made of the relationship between artist and place. A common
consideration for sure, yet it seems foolish to appraise any artist

without considering the effect of his location on everything from his
unique worldview to his understanding and use of the various elements that
make up his musical vision.

Consider then what it means to make music in the following landscape: a
city famed for its fearlessness and endeavor, struck by despair and
shuttered. A city in which delicate, perfumed beauty sits aside rancid,
mangled poverty. A city wide eyed and weary, at all times both monument
and bulldozer, remaining itself through constant “de” and “re”
construction.

That city is New York and the band is RATKING. Wiki, Hak, Ramon and
Sporting Life. While many of their peers seem too content to inhabit the
safety of mimicry and pastiche, RATKING’s music is best understood as
neither reenactment nor recreation, but reaction.

To what, one might ask?

Well, a clip from any one of their frenetic live shows provides an
immediate answer: you hear the fallout of a bloated and self satisfied hip
hop, the nihilist refrain of dead end punk and the prickly reach for
connection that befits their noise and experimental influences. Left with
the various remaining bits of all these traditions and the bum-rush
scramble of modern life, RATKING are creating a new reality in every
moment, just like every other inhabitant of New York City. While Sporting
Life and Ramon weave a teeming Big Apple backdrop, Wiki and Hak act not
only as our mischievous tour guides but dual ends of our own conscious:
one sharp witted, vulnerable and seemingly anti-social, the other feral,
poetic and almost philosophical. Call it ‘no wave’ rap. Call it ‘no
school’ hip hop. Call it RATKING.