There’s something beautifully unhinged about Thain’s “Still Sick.” It’s the kind of track that sounds like it was written in a fever dream and recorded before the adrenaline had time to fade. From the first few seconds of hard-hitting and yet simple percussion right until a razor-sharp guitar riff tears through the mix; the kind of R&B-flavored lick that hasn’t hit this hard since YK Osiris’s “Worth It.” But where Osiris used it to seduce, Thain uses it to scar. This isn’t smooth talk; it’s a wound humming through the amplifier.
Thain, hailing from Wichita, Kansas, isn’t just another rapper trying to catch the algorithm. He’s a craftsman; the kind of artist who still believes a studio is a place for combustion, not perfection. On “Still Sick”, you can hear that urgency; the track doesn’t sound polished so much as caught in motion, like someone hit “record” in the middle of an argument and just let it play out.
Vocally, Thain sits somewhere between Schoolboy Q’s rugged snarl and Jay Rock’s no-nonsense confidence, with flashes of Logic and Joyner Lucas in his rapid-fire control. His flow feels like a balancing act; too tight and it’d suffocate, too loose and it’d collapse. Instead, he threads the needle perfectly, delivering every bar like he’s daring himself not to breathe. There’s swagger, sure, but it’s not for show. You get the sense he’s fighting something; burnout, doubt, maybe the quiet terror of wanting more than what your city will give you.
Thematically, “Still Sick” reads like a confession dressed up as a banger. Thain isn’t wallowing, but he’s not pretending to have it all figured out either. He’s tired; maybe of himself, the grind, maybe even the game; that exhaustion curdles into defiance.
Hippy K’s verse offers contrast rather than competition; a more melodic Young Thug-influenced glide that eases the track’s tension without deflating it. It’s the sort of feature that works because it deepens the mood, not because it fights for the spotlight. Not to mention the live instrumentation gives the track weight; that guitar riff which I cannot give any more praise for, the heartbeat bass, the drums that sound like they were mic’d too close on purpose. It’s messy in all the right ways.
“Still Sick” doesn’t sound like it was built for playlists; it sounds like it was built to exist. It’s hip-hop with calloused hands; part catharsis, part confession, part chaos. And if this is what Thain sounds like when he’s “still sick,” maybe we shouldn’t want him to get better. Maybe everyone else can get to his ill levels.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for various publications around the world, the former lead writer of review blogspace Atop The Treehouse and content creator for Manila Bulletin.
