There is a certain engine-knock honesty to Thain’s new single “Still Sick”, a sound that feels less produced and more… excavated. It’s a defiant piece of Midwest air, thick with the collaborative energy of Hippy K’s verses and the raw, tangible world built by producer Audio Paradolia. This isn’t the slick, polished chrome of mainstream ambition; it’s the hum of a workshop where something real is being assembled from parts that have seen a life.
The entire track pivots on that brilliant, obstinate hook: “sick when I feel like it / drop hits and they still biting.” It’s a statement of controlled chaos, of talent as a faculty you can turn on, not a performance you must maintain. For some reason, it makes me think of the peculiar smell of petrichor—that scent of rain hitting dry earth. You can’t bottle it. You can’t schedule it. It happens when the conditions are just right, and its effect is total and immediate. That’s the power being claimed here, a creative force unleashed on its own unapologetic terms.
Against the live instrumentation provided by Steven Shields, the lyrics dismantle the empty posturing of rivals who only “pretend to get real quiet” after the noise. Thain lays bare a history forged in struggle, a place where integrity was a survival mechanism long before it was a brand. The track doesn’t just reject the “bullshit it takes to be famous”; it seems fundamentally allergic to it, as if its presence might cause the entire thing to short-circuit.
It leaves you with a question that hangs in the air long after the beat fades. In a world desperate for the genuine article, what is the true cost of never, ever faking it?
