Rat Boy

Jordan Cardy, an Essex native, fronts the Rat Boy project, whose blend of indie rock, punk, and hip-hop propelled the 2017 debut album Scum into the U.K. Top 20. For the 2019 successor Internationally Unknown, Cardy collaborated with Rancid frontman Tim Armstrong, who served as co-producer and issued the record on his Hellcat imprint. Cardy next launched the Beastie Boys-influenced side project Lowlife, whose debut album Payday appeared in 2022. Rat Boy subsequently operated as a complete band rather than Cardy’s solo endeavor, resulting in the 2024 third album Suburbia Calling, an Essex tribute.

During the early 2010s, repeated efforts to assemble a pop-punk group in Chelmsford proved fruitless, prompting Cardy to function as a one-man operation and capture a raw 23-minute mixtape that fused punk guitars and noisy samples with hip-hop, reggae, and irreverent attitude. Drawing from Jamie T., Blur, and the Streets—whose 2002 debut Original Pirate Material ranked among his household favorites—he adopted the moniker Rat Boy from a schoolyard taunt and secured a Parlophone deal within a year of releasing The MixTape. The label’s first Rat Boy single, “Sign On,” surfaced in summer 2015. Momentum accelerated into early 2016, landing him on the BBC’s Sound of 2016 longlist and MTV’s Brand New for 2016 shortlist while earning NME’s Best New Artist honor. “Move,” his second Parlophone single, accompanied these achievements, followed later that year by additional singles and the Get Over It EP. The debut full-length Scum arrived in mid-2017, peaking at number 15 on the U.K. charts; tracing the escapades of its central character, the album delivers a distorted, satirical, hyper-real portrait of working-class Britain and incorporates a smoother, less guitar-centric sound marked by ’90s big beat influences. In early 2019, he delivered the second album Internationally Unknown on Parlophone/Hellcat, with Tim Armstrong (Rancid, the Transplants) producing a raucous set that merged punk bite with a hip-hop pulse.

Following several standalone Rat Boy singles, Cardy joined hometown associates Liam Haygarth and Harry Todd to create Lowlife, a punky trio loosely modeled on the Beastie Boys; the group’s debut, Payday, emerged in 2022 on Hellcat. Noah Booth joined Haygarth and Todd, already established Rat Boy regulars, when Cardy reconfigured the primary project as a four-piece band. The resulting 2024 release Suburbia Calling, produced by Stephen Street (Blur, the Smiths), was conceived as a tribute to the band’s Essex roots.