Billy Kimber begins around your eyeballs where it waits for a moment and then rushes every which way, then it’s down to your feet quick. It should come with a warning. Be home or in a place where you can fall asleep or just feel comfortable. I kept repeating, “I’m Detective John Kimble” to my dog in an Arnold Schwarzenegger Kindergarten Cop voice, because well, it sounds sort of like “Billy Kimber.” I’m sorry folks. I texted a friend whose house I’d just left and typed, “This w33d is nuts.” All they sent back is, “Yah.” Confirmation was enough to calm me down, I was not alone at least. And once I got a handle on the high, it was illuminating — it’s a flexible high that changes up frequently and takes the world in instead of shutting it out. Soon I wondered, “Do I have a headache or am I high or are both of those things happening?” It is just such a pressing, pushing, at times massaging high. And music sounds like orgasmically good on this stuff.

I began with the effects and feels because word of mouth on this strain — not yet on Leafly and the like but all over Instagram — has been effusive, mostly because of its potency which hovers around 30 percent, and the fast, elephantine high that follows. The hype’s here too because, no joke, a Drake-adjacent marketing goof has been pushing the strain hard. As a result, Billy Kimber has become a little bit mythic. Even the look of it is extra. It looks like buds grew buds and there’s a Hayao Miyazaki-like puffy naturalism to them, coated in crystal, shiny, aquatic green. Billy Kimber demands idiotic, hyperbolic exaggeration really; “it’s the [insert overwhelming artistic epic of your choice] of weed.” The Infinite Jest of weed. The Berlin Alexanderplatz of pot. You get the point. And indeed, it’s even named after something resembling an epic — that British television show on Netflix here in the States about brutal Birmingham, England, gangs in the 1920s, Peaky Blinders. Billy Kimber is the gambling racket kingpin character on the show, a kind of big deal unifier of sorts but a bit player basically, just one of some import. I anxiously await pending strains from brand-savvy schlockmeisters named after Higgins from Magnum P.I. and Barb from Stranger Things.

When you smoke a moderate amount of it, it will be too much. Know that. Possibly the most melted high of your life, which is worth exploring from time to time, but probably the best way to begin with Billy Kimber is to treat it like an edible, a little at a time. One hit and see how you feel and work it out from there. In other words, control yourself.

Strength: 10
Nose: Watered-down limeade
Euphoria: 8
Existential dread: 9
Freaking out when a crazy person approaches you: 8
Drink pairing: Sprite and vodka
Music pairing: Jon Hassell, Listening to Pictures (Pentimento Volume One)
Rating: 8