Interview: Getting to know RAT BOY

UK prodigy RAT BOY amalgamates slick, sampled sounds with hip-hop and indie-punk. He has played at this year’s Glasto, won NME’s Best New Artist of 2016 and was nominated for BBC’s Sounds of 2016 and MTV Brand New 2016. We asked him to tell us about himself:

I am currently on a flight to Japan. It’s our first time in Japan and we’re playing Summer Sonic Festival.

‘Get Over It’ is the latest single. Check out the new video made in Spain in the desert. It has a customised car I drew and my dad made. There’s only one of them. Check for the little details, like on the car where we changed Ford to Bored and there’s lots of other props made in the video, from clothing to food.

Aside from being a musician, I love making art, painting, making clothes and skating. Sometimes all at the same time.

Home is Essex, England. Now it would be the studio in London mainly. Currently with all the festivals and shows, it’s been tour buses and hotels.

I spend too much time looking for mad samples to use. I’ll be listening to obscure records for hours but it’s good use of my time I think.

I’m currently listening to USSR punk and some of The Strokes again. Also Black Flag. I’ll go through stages of listening to random things and classic stuff. Have been playing Frank Ocean’s Blonde too.

It might surprise people to learn that I can’t swim and I may have the largest stamp collection in Europe. I also have a few deadly allergies but I won’t say what they are.

In the future we’ll all be older. And my generation will be trying to sort out all the fuck ups the older generations have done to the world.

Keep up to date with RAT BOY on Facebook.

Interview by Bobby Townsend.