RATKING - 700 Fill [2015]

So It Goes, RATKING’s debut studio album, is one of the 2010’s best gems; it established Wiki as a supreme rapper, Hak as a supreme lyricist, and Sporting Life as a huge face in modernizing New York production. It was varied, both deep and boisterous, and, most importantly, this album was *cold*. So It Goes was able to capture such a specific snapshot of the wintery, grey life of The Big Apple in a way that no album I’ve heard had been able to. It served as a perfect embodiment of the sounds of the New York streets, and not Times Square or the Upper West, not Brooklyn or the Bronx, but literally the streets of New York: the bridge tunnels, man-holes, exhaust, birds, asphalt, the bodegas, and the ratty old buildings that dot the city. I thought that nothing would be able to capture this feeling again, and I was amazed that RATKING was able to repeat the success, albeit with a slightly different formula, for their second project as a group, 700 Fill. Released just under a year after So It Goes as an EP distributed through BitTorrent, 700 Fill (which would become RATKING’s last project as a group) is unabashedly more cold that So It Goes in every way, with all three members contributing to make it the perfect album to bump during the Winter months when you’re looking for that perfect North Face.

Sport (Left), Wiki (Middle), and Hak (Right) meshed better than so many groups because of their differences, but it’s probably those creative differences that led to their disbanding.

RATKING is a trio, made up of main lyricists Wiki and Hak, with Sporting Life behind the boards. Wiki is the one that has gone on to really make an impact in the industry, and for good reason: he has one of the most identifiable voices in the game. It’s shrill, gutter, quick, and most-assuredly New York. But for all of his gruff, Wiki is strangely abstract and poetic with his lyrics, with some of his turns of phrase containing unexpected beauty. On 700 Fill, he’s more going for that raw, spit-taking sewer rat; the dirt that comes off of his rhymes may take some people aback but it’s integral to the RATKING experience. Hak, Wiki’s perfect complement, is almost the exact opposite of Wiki: soft-spoken, more apt for melody and sing-song delivery, with a palpable good-heartedness that underlies his boyish charm. Many times on RATKING songs he’s relegated to hook or bridge duty, but you know that whenever he comes up with a verse he doesn’t skimp. If Wiki is poetic, then Hak is a double-plus poet, because some of the shit he says is crazy profound for someone his age. Wiki and Hak work perfectly together as a duo, with Hak being the one to keep you fed with knowledge while the snows pour and the ice builds, while Wiki is the one to melt through that ice and bring the fire. If this were So It Goes, I would only describe the rap styles of the first two, but Sport actually has a couple verses on 700 Fill. On Sticky Trap he channels his inner hot-dog vendor, with probably the most modern New York verse I’ve ever heard being entirely clothed in Yankee attire and arrested by the NYPD. Steep Tech is a much better display for Sport, with a great amateurish flow and a sharp voice; I think if he really tried he could have been a competent third vocalist.

Half of the tragedy of RATKING breaking up is the loss of future Sporting Life production under the RATKING name, which had a very distinct feel; it was somewhere between New York, trap, industrial, and left field boom-bap, feeling entirely unique in that embraced the future of the genre rather than looking too far backwards. For 700 Fill, he took that futuristic direction to the max, drawing much more influence from electronica and trap music for his sampling and drums respectively. While Bethel and Lenape Lane revel in the quick repetitive samples that sound like high-energy techno vocals, Eternal Reveal is more of a soulful trap lullaby with the incessant vocal refrains being a constant throughout the entire track.  These vocal samples can be compared to the ones used on So It Goes, but they’re much tighter and… feelingless? They’re more disconnected and digital, making the listening colder. Tracks like Arnold Palmer, Steep Tech, and Sticky Trap are the ones that dig into the potential of trap drums and synths, not sounding so much “mainstream” as much as exploring how to use them to create a chilly mood. The dense drums, high-hats, kicks, and sub-bass are tight-knit (kind of like a North Face), creating a wall of sound like a blizzard of trap. Flurry, my favorite track, is like a fucking icicle with it’s minimal hi-hat and sub-bass driven beat, accented by this everpresent synth that rides the beat up and down. It reminds me of, for all of my gamers out there, The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess when you have to howl as the Wolf at those standing stones? Makeitwork, my least favorite track, plays a bit harder into the mainstream, sounding a lot like Travis Scott or Kid Cudi with its overdramatic instrumental and the background hums and vocalizing.

While 700 Fill was released independently, So It Goes was released on XL, and the group is still signed to XL to this day. Is there hope? (No but let me wish dammit)

There are only a couple of features on here, but they deserve some shine nonetheless. Slicky Boy, who would be on several Wiki releases, sounds like he was just fished out of the sewer with his slurred lisp and disgustingly thick accent, and the way he talks is almost like some sort of child that lives and breathes New York. His appearance on the ending of American Gods is one of my favorites, with steady flow and sick wordplay, but he tries a bit to hard to rap faster on Lenape Lane and ends up falling behind the beat; it’s all entertaining tho. Queen’s own Remy Banks pops up on American God’s for the hook, and does a great job setting the “I don’t give a fuck” attitude of the album. Teddy, another Wiki cohort, also appears on American Gods for an enunciated and slick verse; one of his best for sure. Steep Tech is the posse cut on here, and oh boy is it one for the ages. Besides Sporting Life coming out of the woodwork to lay down a verse of his own, the RATKING boys were able to secure a *Despot* feature, in which he demolished this beat with a flow that literally doesn’t stop; the story he tells about trying to steal a North Face and the ink cartridge exploding all over him in the dressing room is hilarious, but super impressive that he’s able to rap it all out. Princes Nokia (who was Wavy Spice shortly before this on So It Goes, and Wiki’s girlfriend at the time) gets suuuuuper in your face with her cartoonish New York accent, bringing some color with her charismatic delivery and inflections.

In comparison to So It Goes, 700 Fill is often seen as a disappointment, but to this day I still see the two albums as almost neck and neck, but for different reasons. While So it Goes was undoubtedly a more varied album, with the dabbles into industrial and eclectic samples used by Sporting Life creating an album brimming with the life of New York, 700 Fill is the cold breeze that you feel on your ankles and wrists while you sit on the stoop of your Harlem apartment, while the rest of you is covered in that blue Steep Tech you just copped. 700 Fill just gets to the heart of what it is to live in New York in the wintertime (not that I’ve ever lived there myself mind you) on a more person-to-street level than So It Goes did, and it does so with less runtime and less samples.

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