I’m not sure who we have to thank for this whole “surprise album” trend, but goddamn, we love it. Every day is new, exciting, and full of possibility. Maybe today’s the day Drake drops a new mixtape that my roommate will bludgeon me with endlessly for the next month and a half.

Or maybe anti-Drake, aka New York rap trio RATKING will be doing the surprise album dropping. Maybe = yes, they totally just did.

Ironic, because as I write this, I’m looking at our flyer for their 3/20 show with Trash Talk and Lee Bannon that Check Yo’ Ponytail will be throwing at the Echoplex. We haven’t had the chance to RATKING love since Antwon released the video for Metro Nome with RATKING’s Wiki back in July, so we were pretty tickled that they dropped an album just two weeks before our show.

The album, 700 Fill, bangs just as hard as we hoped. Out of the nine songs on it, my personal favorite is the album’s closer “Makeitwork,” a track with an ATL Trap beat fitting for Young Thug (but without all the ad-libbed “Cheeps!” in the background). Their sound is halfway between sample-based tastes of Dilla (the instrumentals reveal a surprisingly soulful backdrop) and a more contemporary trap mentality.

700 Fill should provide the perfect warm-up for the show, giving us a chance to get down without getting our asses beat mercilessly in the mosh pit that Trash Talk will instantly inspire.

Eschewing all the rigmarole of releasing an album through the traditional means, RATKING instead chose to release 700 Fill for free as a BitTorrent along with instrumentals (gimme remixes!!!) and a short film – it’s all available for free download right here.

Download it, pour it in your bathtub, soak in it for two weeks, then come to the show: