Rat Boy- the name seems to carry a lot of weight these days, especially after he won the NME award for Best New Artist 2016. Chances are, if you see someone that looks about 16 wearing white branded sport socks, vans and mom jeans, they’re gonna know who he is. He seems very popular, managing to cram in lots of festivals and gigs across the year including an album tour, Reading and Leeds and Neighbourhood Festival. And, as well as touring his album “scum” around the UK, he’s also launched a merch line going by the same name- he seems like a pretty busy fella.
I thought I should see what the hype was about, so I tweeted ‘omg the labour party r totally the best!!’, put on some black and white checked vans, sat on my bed and blasted some of his music out, to get inside the mind of a proper ratboy fangirl. From what I can gather, he seems pretty annoyed about several things told through some absolutely masterful lyrics, including:
1: The struggle of trying to get away with fake ID: ‘I tried getting past the bouncer but I couldn’t get through’
2: The worry that there’s gonna be another war: ‘We’re not so far from World War 3, I think most of the people here might be crazy’
3: Pollution: ‘C-c-c-coughing up the p-pollution, and I can’t breathe right’
4: Being given the boot by Spoons: ‘I lost my job in Wetherspoons, and since that day my bank has hit zero’
5: But most prevalently, he seems to feel pretty strongly that he’s being f*cked over by the government:
‘Not rich, not poor, what you living for?’
‘Young, dumb, living off mum’
‘I was alright till they took me off my medication, started slagging off my generation’
I mean he’s not the Bob Dylan of songwriting is he, but his lyrics seem to resonate with a lot of millennials who are fed up with Theresa May and looking for someone to write songs about it, rather than an irrelevant feud with Katy Perry. He also seems pretty up front about how he feels and isn’t looking to jump into anyone’s back pocket, which is always a good sign. Plus, its nice to see an artist rising to fame through hard work and producing all their own material, not because daddy knows a man who knows a producer.
Having said that, there’s something that just pisses me off about his songs, and its not just the sub-to-below-average songwriting. It seems as if he’s trying a bit too hard to be cool, like a 15 year old bragging that they stole a wispa from their local convenience store. His social commentary gets a bit boring, with him basically saying ‘its shit that we’re so poor’ in every. single. song. Don’t get me wrong, I agree with his message, I just have a problem with the fact that the doesn’t ever really address the problem at hand in enough detail. His songs are undeniably catchy , but this is mainly thanks to the fact that he seems to repeat the same lyrics a lot- its sort of the catchy that’s annoying rather than enjoyable, like when we all had uptown funk stuck in our heads for the best part of two months.
Then, just to really piss us off, he’s decided to collaborate with Selfridges. Yes, that’s right, anti-capitalist, corporation bashing Ratboy has teamed up with a company so obviously associated with the upper class; a shop in which people with double barrel surnames called ’tilly’ go and buy designer clothes they don’t need. The whole thing just seems like a piss take, and anyone willing to pay £30 for a hat with one of his drawings on is an idiot. He sings of being young, dumb and living off mum, but is happy to charge fans a whopping £85 for a hoodie. As someone pointed out on twitter ‘what is Ratboy doing selling merch on Selfriges as if he’s the Justin Bieber purpose tour 2.0?’
Also, anyone who has listened to Jamie T can see an unnerving clear distinction between his and Ratboy’s music. Don’t get me wrong, every great artist is influenced by other artists… but not this directly. To put it shortly and sweetly, he’s the rip off version of Jamie T, and just because he was sampled on Kendrick Lamar’s song “Lust” doesn’t mean he has to wear Burberry every single day to prove he’s cool.
It’s not as if he’s short of fans, with an album tour coming up soon for Cardy, as well as supporting the one and only Liam Gallagher on some of his tour dates. The cult of besotted girls who swarm around him at signings and on social media certainly aren’t going to miss one member- but It’s safe to say I wont be popping into Selfrige’s any time soon. I think I’ll slip off my black and white checked vans, take my Wispa back to the man at the corner shop and apologise, and blast out some Jamie T instead.
The Yorkshire Scribbler 
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