Biography

Standing on the Corner are an experimental collective from Brooklyn whose unpredictable, collage-like recordings blend abstract hip-hop, free jazz, poetry, lo-fi indie rock, salsa, and numerous other genres. After releasing their self-titled debut in 2016, the group's fan base expanded as they toured with King Krule and collaborated with Earl Sweatshirt. Gio Escobar, a native New Yorker of Puerto Rican heritage, established the project under the name Children of the Corner in 2014. After recording some solo demos, he began working with producer Jasper Marsalis (aka Slauson Malone) on a full-length. Standing on the Corner, a woozy mix of warped vocals, scratchy guitars, and sludgy drum machines, was self-released on September 11, 2016 (the presence of twin towers on the album's cover was entirely coincidental). Exactly a year later, the group returned with Red Burns, a more experimental mixtape that incorporated more poetry and disjointed samples than the group's debut, falling somewhere between a radio play and an audio scrapbook of life in New York City. Fader and Pitchfork ran features on the group, and they began opening for King Krule by the end of 2017. SOTC played on New York rapper MIKE's 2018 EP Black Soap, and were featured on Earl Sweatshirt's Some Rap Songs later in the year. In 2020, the group returned with the single "Angel" and the EP G-E-T-O-U-T!! The Ghetto. ~ Paul Simpson, Rovi