Thain Still Sick: A Studio Session That Bit Back

31/10/2025 33 12 5

Written in the moment. Made to last.

I’ve had these nights. The ones where the walls sweat, the mic’s got teeth, and the bass starts shouting back. That’s what Still Sick feels like — a session that escaped the room before the cables cooled. Thain — Wichita-grown and wired different — dropped this October 31st a track straight from the grit of Echo Garden. A studio that probably still smells like energy drinks and unfinished verses.

This one’s built on a three-way collision: Thain on bars, Hippy K slicing up the chorus with stabby ad libs, and Steven Shields — aka Audio Paradolia — bending live instrumentation like a jazz sorcerer moonlighting in hip-hop. The result? Something that corners you and speaks damn loud.

Still sick when I feel like it. Drop hits and they still biting…” – Thain

In theory — it was made in 4 hours flat

I respect that kind of hustle. Everyone showed up. Live wires, shared air, and three minds building one track in real time. That alone says a lot about their chemistry — born out of past gigs with their rock outfit For the Birds, but redirected here into pure Midwest heat.

And when I say heat — I’m talking about the kind that comes wrapped in lines like: “Still sick when I feel like it. Drop hits and they still biting…” There’s a hunger that bites through every verse. Hit me right in the gut. Some bars just carry a different weight, sharpening themselves for years. That one did. Made me sit up, made me stay.

You can hear the broke-boy past, the cracked-voice saying: “Used to be a broke boy didn’t make enough / Started living life different, couldn’t fake the funk…” Yeah. I’ve sat in studios where people overdubbed their own ghosts, where verses were punched in with more Auto-Tune than soul. This ain’t that.

Said what needed saying. That’s it.

Thain’s flow cuts in loops, coiled under the tongue. There’s a controlled chaos to his delivery, a growl you don’t unhear once you catch it. Some might call it aggressive. I call it honest. “I see y’all get quiet when [__] hit the fan / Everything I’ve been thinking… show me the man.” That’s the line that caught me after the third listen. There’s grit, sure, but there’s also strategy. Pure staking ground, boy!

The references? They’re baked in deep. Eminem’s explosive phrasing, Kendrick’s raw truth, Big Sean’s wit. But none of them are copy-pasted. What Thain’s built here is rooted in Wichita, layered with lived-in lyrics, and wrapped in confidence only Midwestern hip-hop dares to carry this way.

The track’s full of rewind moments. One minute you’re nodding, next minute your eyebrows hit your forehead: “Stop letting people get close. A lot of these rappers they clones…” Tell me you haven’t thought that at least once. I did. Probably this morning.

Out the basement, into the bloodstream

It’s easy to say “lightning in a bottle” — press kits love that line — but Still Sick really take it. This was properly captured. The grit, the funk, the refusal to be small. Even the way Thain closes the loop with: “Drop hits and they still biting…”

This is an observation. You can fake a flex, but you can’t fake staying sick. For me? This one’s already part of the bloodstream. Played it three times back to back, windows open, late night, while probably Wichita whispered through the bass. Something about that felt exactly right.