Rat Boy

English

Rat Boy (real name Jordan Cardy) is a product of his background. Life after school offered little: after going to art school, he faced a succession of rejections from retail work which finally culminated in him landing a job in Wetherspoons. “I was in the kitchen – they didn’t let me out the front because I was too weird,” he recalls. “I wrote a lot of lyrics in Wetherspoons, just sitting at the table writing about people in there. Afterwards, I’d ride my bike home at night, and stop to record drunk people’s conversations. Eventually I got fired.”

Rat Boy found solace in music. If he wasn’t hanging around the skate park, he’d be found trying to teach himself Logic on his mum’s computer, and gradually evolved his skills from that of an absolute beginner to become someone who could bring his flood of ideas to life. He had little other choice. “Every week I tried to start a new band but I couldn’t get people to rehearse. So I did everything myself.”

The result was The Mixtape, which distilled his small-town tales into three minute mash-ups of hip-hop and indie topped with his half-rapped, half-hollered Essex vocal tones. Rat Boy performs almost everything – vocals, bass, keys and production – throughout its five riotous tracks. “I can’t play drums, though. Just strings and fingers.”

Other songs continued where The Mixtape left off. His debut single Sign On tackled the insecurity of being unemployed and hoping that his music career takes off, while the follow-up Fake ID offered a stream-of-consciousness tale of an outsider who gets mugged after being denied entry to a club.

The reaction that followed proved that Rat Boy possessed the ability to connect with a huge audience, with widespread support at Radio 1 backed by critical acclaim from the likes of Noisey, NME, Q, The Fader and DIY. Meanwhile, his anarchic live shows have also sparked chaotic scenes at the Reading and Leeds Festivals as well as on tour with The 1975 and Circa Waves.