Maria Lawson
This Alternative Hip-Hop Song From Knoc The Pyscho’s New Album Talks Relationships, Has A Super Cool Vibe And An Even Cooler Lyric Video.
Welcome to Song of the Day, where we hip you to all the new local releases you should be caring about. By highlighting one new North Texas-sprung tune every week day, our hope is that you’ll find something new to love about the rich and abundant DFW music scene five days a week.
Knoc The Psycho — “LH Guillotine”
RIYL: rap for weridos
What else you need to know: Off the freshly-released album, Foolish Mortals: Body, this single is the embodiment of out-of-the-box hip-hop with an equally-satisfying music video. For the record, the video opens with a trigger warning for those with photosensitive epilepsy, so keep that in mind before watching if that applies to you.
The lyric video, created by Matt Farmer, opens up with a spoken-word portion and a snake sliding across the screen with rainbow lighting in the back, letting you know that this underground rapper’s style is a little bit off the beaten path. The video keeps these abstract visuals going, with Knoc’s face coming on screen in a stop motion animation style from time to time. This isn’t your normal lyric video — it’s an abstract representation of the lyrics.
Throughout the song, Knoc The Psycho sings about how he doesn’t know why he stayed with his ex, and now in hindsight he has a better idea of what the relationship was. He also gets vulnerable, sharing a time trying to escape feelings of anxiety and panic, making this song a loose outline of recent life events and the impact those have had on him.
In a press email, he says that it isn’t about just one thing, but stemmed from a place of wanting to vent.
“I feel like every artist has a 2020 song, or something they made during quarantine that draws from their experience a bit,” he says. “I wanted to have fun lyrically, and not adhere to a traditional song structure. It’s one of my favorites — I don’t know if I have anything else like it.”
Knoc The Psycho is a self-labeler and self-proclaimed audiophile based in Fort Worth. “LH Guillotine” came as part of his April 20 album release, Foolish Mortals: Body, a 10-track, 31-minute showcase of what he’s got. The album, which is his third that’s listenable on streaming services since his debut in 2019, is available on Apple Music and Spotify, so go on and indulge.
Cover art by Jacob Derryberry.