his summer I worked at an artsy summer camp in Connecticut. Often, while we were supposed to be teaching kids juggling, a skill none of us even possessed, my friends and I would instead mess around and listen to music. Luckily hip-hop exists as a common ground for most music listeners under 25 or we never would’ve agreed what to put on. The four of us just sat in the sun, listening to Ready To Die or The Chronic 2001, or whatever, shooting the shit, making fun of each other or talking about girls. In late June, an outbreak of a Norwalk-type virus had hit the camp and a number of people I knew were sick. Prone to an irrational fear of vomiting, I was highly anxious. One night, things had gotten particularly bad, and I couldn’t sleep at all. Feeling a little psychosomatic nausea, I was convinced that at any moment I would start puking. As my anxiety attack got worse, I started hanging around the bathroom, convinced that when my time came, I wouldn’t make it there. I had been reading Peter Doggett’s Are You Ready For The Country? intermittently since October, and that night I had reached the section about Hank Williams Jr.’s face-wrecking car crash. I was a sorry sight, pacing around that bathroom, the lights buzzing, bugs everywhere, imagining Bocephus tumbling down that mountain in his car, cutting the shit out of his face, forcing him to keep that ugly beard for the rest of his life. That morning, my friends and I had been listening to Jay-Z’s Unplugged , arguing about the Roots and imitating that terrible “LAAAAME/ BRAAAIN” part of “Takeover”. That listening session had left little pieces of “Izzo” stuck in my head. There are a number of songs with lines that will stay in the brain, repeating over and over until they don’t mean anything. “Izzo” particularly has this effect, not the chorus so much, because, although catchy, it doesn’t remain nearly as catchy when sung to oneself. Almost every line in each verse has been stuck in my head at one point or another and it was especially bad this night. I was consumed by nausea and Jigga’s voice repeating “I'm over-chargin' niggas for what they did to the cold crush/Pay us like you owe us for all the years that you hold us/We could talk but money talks so talk mo' bucks” for hours on end. It started really getting to me as I was sitting on the toilet, praying for bowel movement. Just this one line, again and again. It didn’t even help distract me from my anxiety, it was just this presence that was always there. No matter what I was thinking about, in the back of my mind was that line on repeat, I'm over-chargin' niggas for what they did to the cold crush/Pay us like you owe us for all the years that you hold us/We could talk but money talks so talk mo' bucks , I'm over-chargin' niggas for what they did to the cold crush/Pay us like you owe us for all the years that you hold us/We could talk but money talks so talk mo' bucks , I'm over-chargin' niggas for what they did to the cold crush/Pay us like you owe us for all the years that you hold us/We could talk but money talks so talk mo' bucks . I was certain that I’d go crazy or that I’d be forever changed somehow. Eventually, I just crashed and fell asleep on a bunkmate’s exercise ball. Thankfully, I didn’t go crazy and my opinion of “Izzo” went unscathed.