Whether it is rapping or visual art, Wiki is true to the never not working ethos of downtown New York. Work, not in the sense of punching into an office, but rather the routine of waking up and chipping away at a project that is a reflection of themselves or the world as they see it. Since his Ratking collective’s meteoric impact in New York and Europe — thanks in part to signing a record deal with XL Records in 2012 — it appeared that Wiki was at the center of N.Y.C.’s new wave that converged music, graffiti, and sports (skateboarding, basketball, baseball). “I think Ratking, we were still on our like uptown, kind of art, weird… That connected the full skating world downtown too with [Adam] Zhu and Market. And that was the zone.” he says.
I ask Wiki to paint the picture of what Market St. was like when he lived with producer Sporting Life and skateboarder/artist Adam Zhu.
“SABIO built a wall in the back. So then legendary writers were coming through every week to paint the wall. It’s so much of an influx of different people. It was me, Sport, Zhu. At some point, Shawn Powers was living there for like four months at a time in the shed, out on the roof. Shawn Powers was in the shed, with a fucking heat lamp, during the winter, like a nut! We were in it. [DJ] Sammy was staying there. Everyone was in and out of there. Now everyone’s out the crib. Zhu’s leveling up the crib. He’s on his grown up shit. But at that time, it was that dusty flophouse. It was a vibe. But it’s sick, because now he’s leveling it up where he’s got the homie Noah — he’s doing tattoos out of there. And then you got Onyx Collective — they rehearse out of there in the shed. So it’s a little bit more structure to it. It is still that productive shit. If we’re like, ‘oh, Zhu we need to do something,’ he’ll make it work. And then there was the Know Wave era. Everyone was just connected. It was cool.”
Wherever Wiki and his team set up shop, either Washington Heights during the nascent years of Ratking, or downtown at Market, there was a magnetic energy of their camaraderie. He rattles off more names of his musical contemporaries: Princess Nokia (f.k.a. Wavy Spice), Show Me the Body, and Tony Seltzer (f.k.a. Young Gutted). “I rather just put on for my people. And when I mean my people, like the people that are around me that supported me — the community,” says Wiki. Arthur Soleimanpour, the founder and owner of Parks Dept, a community-driven audio-visual platform extolls the impact of Market St. “It’s one thing to have space in your heart and be mindful of it. But it’s another thing to have a physical space to gather together and manifest their ideas,” says Soleimanpour. This creative oasis has the heir of Neverland. Kids doing what they want, living free from the boundaries of their parents. Like Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, eventually the Market scene would mature.
Bruno Dicorcia, Wiki’s childhood friend, bears witness to Wiki’s evolution. “The new album is very streamlined, elegant, simple yet elevated. I think that's where Wik's at stylistically. I think he's proven a lot of what he's set out to prove and has probably been in the game long enough at this point to be reflective on the whole experience,” says Dicorcia.