New Music – Nor A Rat, But A King

Hak, the newest soloist after leaving the tri-headed rap conglomerate Ratking, tries his hardest to almost abandon and adopt a new persona that leaves the scum and dirty raps of New York behind. Hak begins a new chapter of his life with a totally different producing style and rap style as a whole, though he doesn’t necessarily leave all of New York behind.

June is the newest drop from once Ratking rapper Hak, he now leaves the street sounding style to connect through a more almost sleepy club record. The change is welcome however and while it sounds strange at first to anyone expecting another Ratking offshoot. Well the first thing I can say is lose the expectations and see this as a totally new artist as Hak really brings his new ideals to the foreground. I welcome this musical change and it was actually interesting to see how Hak has progressed from one of the creative powers of a rap-group, to now the spotlight of a solo/song-writer/singer career.

While I don’t want to only talk about Ratking, it is important to see Hak’s come up in music and to see where his influences are. Being the New York “Guiana Nigga” that he is, New York is still one of the biggest influences in his music and it is still easy to grasp and see why. The only differences is, Hak changed from the alleys to the main streets and this is a tape that sounds a little easier to jump into especially if you never heard his previous work. This isn’t a necessarily bad thing, and it will definitely be able to get a bigger audience for his new tape.

Publication is a good thing, but I just don’t see Hak blowing up or becoming huge with June. I like this work and I totally will say that it is a different publication from what were are used to with Hak, I just want to see him treat June as a trial run and I am eager to see what he does with this new style in the future.

Hak is for sure a talented musician and has so many connections and powers in his hand to make an outstanding record, and there are many songs on June that I really thought stood out. Songs like “Aura”, “Hues”, “Concrete Waves”, and “432 Hz” are all really great, flushed out songs. The rest of June just unfortunately wasn’t something that I thought was monumental, or that really stood out. They could be played as more calm songs, which I don’t mind, however they just seemed to miss the mark and it was unfortunate because I really wanted to love June.

I, personally just seem to associate more with the dirty street sounds of Ratking, and that just goes for music in general. I like the dirty, hardcore, dramatic songs that have a heavy emotion tied to them. With June however, the auto tune, the simple beats, and the lackluster verses did not move mountains for me.

I still recommend checking out June as it comes with some really interesting and creative songs, the lyrics from the single “Aura” still resonate in my head and it really gave me high hopes for the rest of the record. I still want to hear more from Hak, it is just June was not really my favorite tape, I did not hate it but I also didn’t fall in love. I recommend it, and hope it does more for someone else, but also want Hak to willingly come full force and will be able to make us see the sun again.