Methinks the Rat Boy doth protest too much with the the title of his album Internationally Unknown. Granted, British rapper Jordan Cardy isn’t exactly famous on this side of the pond. But the 22 year old’s 2017 debut album Scum did rise into the Top 20 in his homeland. So surely at least a few folks over here have heard of him. And there’s no reason to think this sophomore effort won’t lure more people to the party. Produced and co-written by Rancid‘s mush-mouthed singer-guitarist Tim Armstrong, Internationally Unknown sets Rat Boy’s pudding-thick accent and melodic delivery against Armstrong’s trademark cocktail of surging guttersnipe punk, herky-jerk third-wave ska and bottom-heavy reggae-rock. The intriguingly idiosyncratic and immediate-sounding results live somewhere in the neighbourhood Jamie T, The Streets and Mick Jones fronting The Clash circa Sandinista. That might not prove commercial enough to make him globally famous in the near (or even distant) future, but if there’s any justice, at least he won’t be an unknown quantity in North America much longer.
