Ratking announces debut LP + releases new single

RATKING ANNOUNCES DEBUT ALBUM

SHARES NEW SINGLE "CANAL"

SO IT GOES DUE APRIL 8TH VIA HOT CHARITY 

   

Photo by Jamie-James Medina 

Following a busy 2013 that saw them playing shows with acts as diverse as GZA, Death Grips, King Krule and Trash Talk as well as collaborating with legendary photographer and filmmaker Ari Marcopoulos, RATKING are ready to announce their debut album So It Goes. The album finds the group perfecting the balance between the raw, unbridled energy of their live set and the warm soulful, golden-era hip hop that the members grew up on, aided in large part by engineering from Young Guru (Jay-Z, The Diplomats, Notorious B.I.G.). Due April 8th via Hot Charity, So It Goes is a portrait of modern day New York City painted over the course of its 11 tracks. For evidence of this, check out lead single "Canal" along with all other album details and the group's upcoming tour dates below.

"Plenty of albums are about the city, far fewer are of it. "Wiki93" (Hot Charity/XL), the debut EP by the clever, sardonic and intense New York hip-hop crew Ratking, is in its fiber a product of the city - not just the physical streets, but also a frame of mind and a set of experiences." - 

Jon Caramanica, The New York Times  

STREAM: "Canal" - http://youtu.be/nfyDcKCqjJ8

  

Pre-Order So It Goes: http://smarturl.it/SoItGoesPre

Tour Dates

04/13 Indio, CA - Coachella

04/20 Indio, CA - Coachella

04/25-27 Rome, GA - CounterPoint Music Festival

06/06-08 New York, NY - Governors Ball Music Festival 

 RATKING

So It Goes

(Hot Charity)

April 8, 2014

1. *

2. Canal

3. Snow Beach

4. So Sick Stories (ft. King Krule)

5. Remove Ya

6. Eat

7. So It Goes

8. Puerto Rican Judo (ft. Wavy Spice)

9. Protein

10. Bug Fights

11. Take (ft. Salomon Faye) 

About RATKING: 

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 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 weaves 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.