Tag: Video Review: Substance Therapy

New Video: Melbourne, Australia’s Remi Reveals that He’s One of Hip-Hop’s, New Conscientious, Storytelling Emcees

“Substance Therapy,” the second and latest single off the album is as Remi explains in press notes is about depression being “a dream in a scream mask, brandishing a hunting knife. When I take drugs, or drink, it’s the equivalent of giving that motherfucker the coordinates to my house. it just makes everything so worse,” and as a result, the song lyrically focuses on a narrator, who drinks, drugs and womanizes excessively to desperate escape his life and its miserable circumstances; however, besides leaving him broke, frustrated, alone, increasingly depressed, anxious and fucked up — and he recognizes that he’s in a difficult to break cycle. Sonically, Sensible J’s production is meant to emphasize the fucked up, anxious and depressed feeling from the lyrical content as you’ll hear looped and repetitive chopped up samples, heavy bass stabs, swirling electronics and buzzing synths. Interestingly, the song captures the vacillating sense of loathing, self-doubt, fear, anger and escapism of the severely depressed while revealing that the young emcee is adding himself to a lengthy tradition of emcees who can rhyme while telling a compelling story.

The recently released music video features a stumbling and staggering Remi while rhyming the lyrics of the song through the woods and on a pier as several hooded figures follow him — perhaps those figures are his doubts and obligations; in any car they follow him as though they were simultaneously judging his actions, enabling his bad behaviors and judging them altogether.