New York rap albums with grinding loops and densely staggered, mumbled rhymes are a staple for hip-hop fans, and Wiki’s »Half God« was the best of them last year. The vinyl version has now been released just before the last snow in the Allgäu melts. Eight years have passed since Wiki, as part of Ratking, landed with an audience that mainly caught chlamydia at indie discos and read Pitchfork in the waiting room, bent forward, with their legs tightly crossed. On »Half God«, hipsterism is long dead, but the city is still gentrified. The great thing is that the album sounds like a bodega, but also reflects the latte macchiato – the »rotten« in Apple has lost even more dimensions in 2022. »Half God« is for Alchemist, Roc Marciano and Sweatshirt fans: brash raps delivered from deep under the puffer jacket, where the technique leaves you speechless first before your entire mind is blown by the density of lyrical introspection. If you don’t like anything and don’t like to go out, this is the album for you.
Half God
