After Injury Reserve, RiTchie gets back in the game
Most mornings at his home in Phoenix, RiTchie rises with the sun. "Wifey's nine-to-five, so I try to stay on the same schedule," he tells me. He converted a spare room into a home studio in the house they bought a year ago, so he doesn't have to go far to record. But because it faces south, it's also the hottest room in the house. By afternoon, he's usually cooking in more ways than one.
"When I'm basically really deep into making a song, it's piping hot in here because the sun's beating on it."
That notorious Phoenix sun serves as an unrelenting backdrop, and co-conspirator of sorts, on Triple Digits [112], a solo debut that finds RiTchie, formerly one-third of the experimental rap group Injury Reserve, packing his own metaphorical heat. He was in the middle of recording last July, while Phoenix was suffering a record-setting hot streak. For 31 days, temps soared to 110 degrees or above. "I was doing this record while Phoenix broke the record," he says. "So in between takes, I'm turning the A/C on and off." The record highs coincided with an internal pressure he felt to produce something that would match the eclectic, technical standard he'd set with Injury Reserve.
The album finds RiTchie taking respite from all that. Not just because it's his first outing apart from Injury Reserve or By Storm — the duo he and producer Parker Corey formed in the wake of losing Injury Reserve member Stepa is a release from the stifling expectation RiTchie felt to outdo himself and surpass a discography that's easily one of hip-hop's most experimental. Unlike the avant-garde 2021 LP, , which found the trio obliterating genre norms, RiTchie wanted to go for something ... : rappin' about rappin' again.
