Yes, Grim Sickers has done it again with brand new joint ‘Open The Till’ and not only has he brought through Grime’s most eminent emcee Ghetts to help whip this in to a storm of energy, but he’s also worked some grime magic and pulled off the most spectacular trick to date by getting none other than Mike Skinner back on the mic, under new pseudonym ‘Darker The Shadow’.
If ever there was an instrumental made for three hugely differing and remarkable artists, this is it. Mike Skinner is distinctively on the buttons for this one too and the balance of dark, bassy and merky that epitomises Ghetts, brash and bouncy for Sickers and the melodic garage tones for Darker The Shadow instantly makes this gold. Grim Sickers delivers yet another knockout hook, with Darker The Shadow wading in to administer the punchline before Ghetts comes through with the opening verse. Sickers and Darker The Shadow then bounce through the mid and last verse allowing the lyrical prowess of the three to each have their much needed, and well-deserved, time on the pedestal.
Talking about the record and how the extraordinary collaboration came about, Mike Skinner says: “Open the Till Is a big moment for me, I’ve never featured on someone else’s record before. I’ve been working with Grim for a while since I signed KANE, and so we’ve been in studio’s a lot, mainly talking about chicken wings.
Watching Ghetts record his verse was seriously a career nightlight for me. It was fully Jay-Z Rain Man, sitting on his own with no pen or pad, and then of course performing it in the booth like he’d been singing it his whole career. Anyway at the end of that we were left with a gap at the end of the song and I thought, if I don’t sing on this song, I will regret not being on the same song as these two for the rest of my life”.