review: Ratking - So It Goes

hip-hop

Really good NYC indie rap. Rhymes go for a smilar balance of ruggedness and abstraction as groups like Company Flow or Cannibal Ox. Beats are adventurous and synthy the way a lot of Anti-Pop Consortium's stuff was (though Ratking doesn't ever get quite as weird overall as Anti-Pop). The mood of this album is pretty consistent throughout: heavy beats that have lots of great little details but which aren't ornate, lots of fuzzy and staticy textures, and a feeling of warmth surrounded by cold (the line "twenty degrees outside/but toasty" from track 3 is a great summary of the mood here). Great winter-in-NY music.

recommended if you like: company flow, cannibal ox, anti-pop consortium

other points of reference: mobb deep (for the grimy scenes and kids on the wrong side of the law themes), dipset (for some of the more accessible tendencies), three 6 mafia (for some of the drum programming)

no FCCs (this is a clean copy)

1: minimalistic beat, choppy sampled drums under a what sounds like a warm and heavily distorted vocal snippet as the melody. a statement of purpose explaining why they don't sound like their predecessors (with some supporting vocal samples).
2: big booming kicks, ticking hi-hats and snares, sheets of static, chopped and pitched up vocal snippets. rappers bounce along over the beat.
3: starts with more slow, futuristic boom-bap drums. melodic elements are coated in fuzz and have a bit of a carnival vibe. switches up around 1:30, keeps the fuzz, but slips in some warm horn samples and ups the pace a bit. rapping about NYC winters and run-ins with the law, a bit sing-songy on the hook around 3:00 (and subsequent choruses), but the rapping's mostly delivered with a sneer. totally apt title ("snow beach"). the less distorted horns towards the end remind me just a bit of blockhead's solo work, though they have a nice dubby echo too.
4: slow, contemplative piano, booming kicks, intermittent clicky/skippy cymbals and snares. subject matter's firmly in "life's a bitch" territory (but a little more emo than nas or AZ, with all the mentions of journals and wrist-cutting). king krule sings the hook. beat drops out a little and the flow changes up a bit for a little while around 2:40, then things resume as they were.
5: all about cops hassling people, profiling people for stop and frisk. starts w/ a sample of someone being arrested (parts of which get played throughout). ends w/ a spoken word rhyme about black kids getting arrested (which sounds like it's delivered on the subway). the whole thing's actually pretty bouncy and upbeat though, which you could probably read as being defiant and not taking shit, to the degree that's possible.
6: skipping drums, mellow somewhat metallic synths, sing-songy vocals skipping along with the beat and then more straight-forward rapping around 1:00. lyrics about getting numb and trying not to get into trouble.
7: opens with chopped pitched up vocal fragments and a really heavy bass line. some snare and cymbal rolls. double-time rapping to start things off, but then slips into the same pace as the beat after the first chorus. rapping is subtly (but not entirely) sing-songy in parts (not a bad thing). subtle bluesy back-up vocals (samples?) in the second half.
8: opens with kind of a minimalistic beat, with a steady 4/4 pulse, not too fast but has some forward momentum. bmore-ish snares come in and out starting around 1:00. rapping starts off as repeated chants, but then gets into some more verse-like stuff (that's still got a sort of free-associative/stream-of-consciousness thing). solid double-time rapping from female guest rapper.
9: beat has that same stuttery "is this about to turn into jungle?" thing as big boi's "fo yo sorrows" (the one w/ george clinton and too $hort from his first solo). like that track, it never does, but it throws you off in a way that's cool. another one with a lot of variation in the flows and a general tendency towards abstract lyrics.
10: if pop music sounded like dipset, this would get classified as indie pop. that modern synthy style of NYC hip-hop beat, but with more fuzz and echo and general psychedelia. plaintive female vocal samples in the background.
11: some sort of filtered fuzzed-out melody sample, warm and bit crushed. big slow-rolling kicks with a lot of decay, and those trappy snares that everyone's adopted once people realized it was ok to like southern rap. half-sung vocals in the background and on the hook. flows weave slowly around the beat. a good dramatic (but not overly so) closer. drums drop out towards the end and you're left with the fuzz for a while before it all ends.

recommended: 3, 4, 7, 8