I caught the street-rat New York rapper Wiki opening for Spirit Of The Beehive at a Pitchfork Music Festival aftershow this summer. It was a great live hip-hop experience, the kind where a rapper actually spits his material without a backing track and is magnetic enough to hold your attention without much stagecraft to speak of. His recorded output continues to be impressive too, and he’s about to add to it.

Wiki has teamed with the Y2K-revivalist New Jersey producer Subjxct 5 for a full-length project called Cold Cuts, designed as a throwback to the mixtape era. Our first preview of the project is a six-minute epic called “My Life,” which finds Wiki spinning his yarn in grimy, unflashy bars that mesh well with Subjxct 5’s noisy-city-street boom-bap production. Listen below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Jersey Sub”
02 “My Life”
03 “3 Train To Mecca”
04 “Mista”
05 “Come Home” (Feat. Afrikillz)
06 “Butta Leather”
07 “The Fonz”
08 “Evergreen” (Feat. Papo2oo4)
09 “Bossed Up Sense”
10 “Phone Calls” (Feat. Big Ouee)
11 “Wikispeaks 2K22”
12 “Silent Meeting” (Feat. DJ Lucas)
13 “Until We On” (Feat. Reed & Hunnaloe)
14 “Ricky” (feat. YL)
15 “Bones” (Feat. Papo2oo4)
16 “One More Chance (feat. Navy Blue)
17 “Peace 2 MC Shan” (Feat. Slicky)
18 “Always Will”

Cold Cuts is out 10/21 via Wikset Enterprise.