Hi everyone, Justthony Rocktano here, the internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time for a review of this new Wiki album, Ancient History.

Here we have a brand new album from the New York original, Wiki, an underground rap veteran at this point. I believe he is seven albums in if you count the various collaborations he has dropped over the years along with his solo efforts, though Wiki's career goes even further back than that when you count the work he dropped with the now defunct group Ratking, whose first record honestly continues to go overlooked, not only in terms of how good it was, but also for being the unique listen that it was on the New York 2010s rap landscape. I mean, there were ways in which these guys were hip to UK rap trends that were happening at the time, prior to the whole Brooklyn drill thing. But, I digress.

Wiki himself, though, continues to be a standout one-of-a-kind artist, though, with a style that is very distinctly New York — lyrical, thoughtful, meditative — but without coming across like some overly nostalgic homage to any number of '90s albums and artists, as his work is very much clearly modern, and his catalog is getting better in my opinion with each new record.

There was that Half God album that he dropped way back in 2021, which featured a slate of beats from none other than Navy Blue, who who just dropped a record himself. That project had some of his best and most topical material to date. And even the little Tony Seltzer crossover that he came out with 3 years ago at this point had a really strong crop of songs on it, too. So given that, of course, my expectations going into Ancient History were pretty high.

And off the bat, I did find it pretty interesting how many complicated feelings about the city he calls home are sort of strewn about this record. Be it either on the lead single to this album, "Park," which is this nearly drumless, idyllic ode to parks themselves, with Wiki waxing poetic on them as places to escape the hustle and bustle and pressures of the concrete jungle, places he needed at certain points in his life to just decompress and get some room to breathe. In a lot of ways, this track actually reminds me of the Half God cut "Roof," but still, doesn't take away from the magic and appeal of it for me.

There's also "IHNY," which stands for "I Hate New York," a track where he literally goes over his love/hate relationship for the city, making reference to its many amazing and necessary cultural touchstone moments, especially in music, be it either hip-hop or punk, but then also going into the ways in which the city has changed for the worse over the years, or even the challenges of continuing to live there that wear on him. Similar themes are extended onto the song "Bloom" as well, which is all about affordability in the city, though I do find this track more striking and necessary topically than musically, because a lot of the sung vocals that go into it, both Wiki's and of the feature vocals are a bit rough in my opinion.

There are also a fair amount of tracks that lyrically take a more personal angle, many of which go to much darker places than I think Wiki has been willing to in the past. Like, on the intro to the record, where Wiki kicks things off by saying, "Some would call him a tragic poet / Could'v been globally known if only he had more exposure / Only known by locals, tri-state, bi-coastal / Really only the pot smokers." Also, kinda blown away by that "mogul, mogul" line deeper into the track, because I had no idea that "mogul" was also a term used with, like, you know, skiing and hills and so on and so forth.

But still, as real as Wiki's underground status is, seeing him engage with it and acknowledge it in this way does come across a little sad, in a way. Much deeper into the record, we also get the track "Bourbon," which is one that's all about his struggles with drinking over the years, the boom-and-bust cycle of binging, wild behavior, and then regret. Which, of course, is all set to these wondrous loops of orchestral bits, and what sounds like faint harps too, getting sad over all the time he spent thinking of his ex and wasting his own money.

Also getting pretty personal on the track "Marm era." This song is a real trip down memory lane set to a few really awesome and pretty distinct beat switches, which change along with the stories and recollections that they happen to line up with.

I feel like tracks like this really help you to get to know what makes Wiki important and significant as a rapper, his ability to kind of paint a vivid picture in complete earnest, and that's what this song does so well.

I also want to highlight the track "Had Your Fun," which is all about friends, or really even, fake friends in a way. Or, or, or, rather, seeing those who you lose along the way in this journey called life, that don't stick around through the lows and the tough moments because it just wasn't meant to be. There's a rawness to this track that I appreciate, not only emotionally, but it kinda sounds like on this song, as opposed to nearly every other track here, Wiki recorded the vocals into the voice notes app on on his phone, and honestly it sounds really well mixed into the instrumental. It works, and feels about just at the same level of quality as the kind of dusty, haunting, strange vocal harmony chops that are sort of used to create a hook on the song, too. So there is some synchronicity there.

There are a couple of great standout features on the record as well that buoy the album overall, I would say. There's Your Old Droog on "All in The Lining," which is a classic boom bap-flavored cut with a heavy beat, some booming bass, really good vocal and lyrical chemistry between Wiki and Droog. It's a real sort of steel sharpening steel type moment. Then Salimata on "Something New" is a great complement to that track with the sort of romantic lyrical angle that one is taking. There's a cute, low-key energy to this one. The song is kind of like an opening flirtatious, you know, line or introduction that actually works.

I will say overall, though, I didn't find this project to be quite as consistent or as focused as Wiki's past couple of main solo records, and there are definitely a handful of low points that I either found to bring the record down or just kind of came across a little underwhelming. Be it either "7 Deadly Sins," which is one of many tracks here that takes a more stripped-back, pretty much drumless approach. Like, there's definitely a little snare and some very light ride cymbal in there for sure, but the pacing and groove of this one is very abstract and very unlike much of any other hip-hop tracks you're gonna hear this year.

And while there is a beauty to that approach, there's also a never-ending tension that I feel like doesn't really get resolved by the end of the song. And as a result, even though I do like the personal angle of the lyrics on this track, it does leave it feeling kind of like it's just in this forever intro mode and never quite gets to the meat of the song.

There's also the track "One Time," which wasn't doing too much for me either. The skittering, fragmented grooves and production on this one do leave open a lot of space for Wiki's voice for sure, and his flow does a lot to kind of connect these dots and give the song at least some sense of groove. But with all this additional attention being brought to his voice, I feel like he doesn't really step things up all that much lyrically. The surrounding tracks in the tracklist on this album, I feel like he brings more to say to the table.

Unfortunately, this record, I feel, comes to a somewhat unceremonious finish as well, which doesn't really draw me back into the record outside of the key tracks and highlights that I enjoyed the most. Thankfully though, I did like a majority of the tracks on this album, as Ancient History most definitely contains some of Wiki's best material ever, best material in a long time. Some of his darkest and most personal tracks yet. Unfortunately, though, I just feel like the greater vision of the album didn't really come through all of that.

Still, though, feeling a decent to strong 7 on this album.

Anthony Fantano, Wiki, forever.