A Day in the Park with Wiki
The influential New York rapper soaks in the city’s greenery while talking about growing up without aging out, his struggles with sobriety, and crafting his lush new album, Ancient History.
Near the end of a day spent being swept up in classic New York City activities, Wiki tells me about a movie he recently watched that immediately became a personal favorite. I’m Not Rappaport is a solemn buddy comedy from 1996 about two octogenarians who bond after meeting on a bench in Central Park. Midge Carter, played by the late Ossie Davis, is the jovial, half-blind superintendent of an apartment building who’s getting forced into retirement; Nat Moyer, played by the late Walter Matthau, is a lifelong communist, former labor organizer, and habitual liar. Rappaport is at its best when Davis and Mattheu are given room to lovingly argue with each other on some Odd Couple shit. And when the camera saunters through Central Park, lingering on eccentric regulars like a ballroom dancer and his blow-up mannequin and a vindictive cowboy drug dealer. It’s an honest and quaint rendering of perhaps the most ever-changing city on the planet at the end of the millennium.
Wiki, a lifelong New Yorker and avowed cinephile, saw Rappaport for the first time a few months ago, around the time he turned in his sixth studio album, Ancient History. The rapper born Patrick Morales is only 32, but he says the film is oddly reflective of his current life. These days, 15 years removed from his frenetic origins as a member of the raucous trio Ratking and a decade into his solo career, every morning starts out more low-key: get up, brush teeth, make coffee, head to Seward Park on the Lower East Side to smoke a spliff and people-watch. When we first link earlier in the day, which just so happens to be the afternoon before Game 3 of the NBA Finals between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs, he affectionately refers to Seward as his “office.” He had just come from an appearance on Hot 97’s morning show—his first time ever being featured on the institutional rap radio station, a badge of honor for any native New Yorker—and he’s eager to walk through Seward’s winding paths, pointing out landmarks and greenery like an excited tour guide.
Seward also happens to be the first of 10 parks he shouts out on History’s aptly titled lead single “Park,” an ode to the oases where he’s found peace amid neverending concrete since he was a child. “I grew up right by Riverside Park, so I would always be out,” he explains. “It’s definitely just that escape from the city, but it still has that city energy. There’s always something going on, always a conversation to be had.” Wiki’s detail-rich writing rapidly flits between different locations: Watching potential future MVPs shoot hoops at Rucker Park, taking a quick dunk in the Angels of the Waters fountain at Central, spending days talking up dime-pieces and putting grooves in benches. Its video, an amorphous collage of park footage co-directed by Wiki and frequent collaborator Weird Dane, has allegedly been warmly received by City Parks officials.
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