Ratking’s debut album So It Goes was a Delorean trip through seemingly incongruous corners of New York rap music. Touching on insular Def Jux pessimism and outsized Dipset flair and coated by a shroud of bristly noise, So It Goes seemed to search for an old city, one in danger of being thrust into into the East River by an influx of doe-eyed, affluent young professionals. "Welcome to New York" this was not. Their music can feel like a trek through a forbidding city winter, so it’s fitting that the group holed up in December to craft the quick-hit follow up EP 700 Fill. Though it arrives at the tail end of an uncommonly brutal cold season and literally namechecks North Face jacket models and the grade of their goose-down filling on a song ("Steep Tech"), 700 Fill is a lighter, breezier listen than its predecessor, thanks to the group’s eagerness to toy with its sound and writing process.

Much of 700 Fill was written in just a week by rappers Wiki and Hak over beats that producer Sporting Life pieced together ahead of recording. The lack of an overarching concept gives the new material a freer feel, as Wiki trades grizzled storytelling for battle raps and rhyme acrobatics. Still, there are gems here: "Arnold Palmer" kicks a metaphor comparing the titular ice tea and lemonade hybrid to Wiki’s own biracial heritage while pining for a cold Brisk and a fat J on a rooftop in summer, while "Bethel" triumphantly renounces So It Goes’ high school graduate career anxiety after a year of good press and extensive touring. 700 Fill cycles between fleshed out cuts and looser lyrical workouts like "Lenape Lane" and "Sticky Trap" but even the most perfunctory of these exercises are intriguing.

Wiki’s internal rhyme-heavy raps and Hak’s airy hooks were occasionally too divergent to gel on So It Goes, but with 700 Fill, Ratking seems to be figuring out what to do with Hak. The EP confidently cuts him loose on intros, bridges and outros as a confectionary dusting to Wiki’s gruff veneer, although he’s still working out what to do when he’s tossed an entire verse on "Lenape Lane" and "Bethel". 700 Fill’s not afraid to throw the Wiki-Hak balancing act out the window, though: The two best cuts here are "Eternal Reveal", a gossamer Hak reverie with a short Wiki verse stuck in the middle, and "Flurry", a spitfire Wiki solo cut. Sporting Life’s taking verses too, and the brusque, unpolished humor of his voice is a reminder that home base for the group is Harlem.

With Ratking’s rapping axis exploring new forms of expression, 700 Fill is really a showcase for Sporting Life. He’s eased off the needling skronk of So It Goes and the group’s debut EP Wiki93 in favor of spacier, more melodic textures. "American Gods" and "Eternal Reveal" both revisit Sport’s knack for flaying a sample beyond recognition but drop his trademark willful dissonance, the former in service of a soulful sendup of New York’s Just Blaze era and the latter, an idyllic waltz. Otherwise, Sport prefers affixing trap drums to winding, ghostly synth lines to dizzying effect. Imagine Dan the Automator popping in the Mike WiLL era.

700 Fill is the sound of Ratking pulling its sound apart between albums to feel around for what works and doesn’t. Its off-the-cuff sound and free Bittorrent release strategy suggest a group attempting to sidestep the press and PR machine to sneak around and find itself. "We’re talking about practice," Wiki sneers in "Bethel", quoting a classic press conference from NBA superstar Allen Iverson. "Not the game!" If Wiki, Hak and Sport are just in warm-ups here, the form is still on point.