Although Zoon’s new EP Big Pharma only consists of five tracks, its 20-minute run time covers plenty of ground thanks in part to the wide range of collaborators Daniel Monkman enlisted for the project. For “Oil Pastel/Dope Sick,” they brought Cadence Weapon in to rap on the track, with the fusion of the pair’s creativity leading to a hazy, lo-fi single that recalls the genre-wary blog raps of a decade ago from artists like unouomedude and Cities Aviv.
“‘Oil Pastel’ is a song I wrote while trying to navigate through addiction and a relapse,” Monkman shares of the track’s origins. “I [can’t] really speak on the lyrics but the music came from a very vulnerable place. It also came from my love of hip-hop music. Growing up as a kid it was hard for me to relate to rock bands who sang about growing up in the suburbs. I gravitated towards hip-hop because I absolutely related to their lyrics.”
To match that chillwave energy the track embodies, today we’re getting a visual for it courtesy of Koel Anderson which sees Cadence rapping his verses distorted by various VHS-quality filters. Check it out below, and listen to Big Pharma in full here.
