Wiki's Ancient History is a love letter to a New York that's vanishing

Plenty of rappers are from New York. Few sound as much like it as Wiki.

The former Ratking MC — real name Patrick Morales — has spent a decade making music that smells like a specific city: bodega boom-bap, jazz loops gone to seed, a gravel voice cataloguing a downtown being priced out of existence in real time. He isn't nostalgic, exactly. He's documenting.

His best-loved record set the template.

Half God (2021), produced top to bottom by Navy Blue, is a hazy, soulful career high — the sound of a rapper and a producer who understood each other completely. It's where a lot of people fell in.

Ancient History (2026) extends the project and sharpens it. Critics named it an album of the week the day it dropped; it's the work of someone who's stopped trying to prove anything and is simply telling the truth about where he's from. In a year of maximalist rap, its restraint is the whole point.

Where to start

New here? Half God is the easiest door in, but Ancient History is the better argument for why Wiki matters right now. Rate them both below — and if you've watched the same city change, the comments are open.