Sick Jacken - "Cutlass Supreme"

I joke about being an alcoholic, but it's a utilitarian choice: I drink to make my brain shut the fuck up. This doesn't come naturally.

A month into talking shit about all these pork-fisted amateur videos, I almost forgot that I fell in love with rap music for the same reason. The right combination of beats and rhymes will absolutely silence the radio in my head for as long as the track runs. This is one of those cuts - a perfect pocket and rock solid performance on the mic.

Sick Jacken has carried a lot of weight on his shoulders and never broke a sweat on camera. In 2017, he's the Ideal Rap Career Outcome - someone who has earned enough worldwide respect to tour, but can still shop for groceries without shit getting weird.

Psycho Realm entered my life right around the same time I swore to die rapping.

There's hearing a verse and then there's listening to a verse - it's almost telepathy when you're really listening. Long have I suspected this is the true, naked power of rap: asynchronous mind-to-mind communication. Unpack that. There is no audio book in the world as potent as the right three minute rap song at the right time.

Contemplate, if you will, the absurdity of mogs from Minneapolis, Minnesota being inspired by Wu-Tang, or a young man in Idaho bumping Project Blowed and growing up to become Doseone.

Contemplate how Cypress Hill tapes re-wired the brain of a young Ninja, 23 hours away by plane. He grew up to become the maniac behind Die Antwoord. ("The Answer." Zef.) Fast forward a dozen years and Die Antwoord is posted up in the studio with DJ Muggs cutting an album track. None of it makes sense even in retrospect.

Big Tiny directed this. No clue who that is, but he made cheap cameras look good as hell. The framing is raw but not clumsy, and every shot here works.

Overall, big ups to Big Duke and hell yeah to everything here.