1. |
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Can I live? Can I pull out the needles I’ve been stuck with in a bloodletting Ima turn into drip? Can i live? Can I chill and not take up space to trip, red-pilling myself until I submit? Can I live? Can I pull up on myself and disclaim whoever else voice it is that say my mistakes only why I exist too much and too loudly for me to question it? A nigga is the grill he got, a nigga is the chain he lost that he got from Willy Will off the lot. A nigga be in pocket till he not, till he shut down and won’t talk, Fort Knox. Giving so little takes so much, putting in work to look like he don’t give a fuck. It’s worth it to pretend you never get wound up and shrug it off and put half on the Sag cusp. JK Ima hold it forever. The angry nigga at my core is many things, (but) not forgetful. He say, “The jewels retooled you to make more fools than schools do; of course you out here now wishing you could do better. You know that you’ve sewn the thread of all you’ve regretted. You know no one calling after ties have been severed.” ¡Y no lo puedo puto creer! So I hit the dab pen on the Megabus, nigga who gon beat my ass?
I might get high too much, but do I give a fuck? Who gon beat my ass? Half the time I see my best self as a nigga who know what he deserve. Then I wake up on the next day unable to relate to the meaning of the word. The unlimited worlds in this one earth, their work and its worth
motivate my love of life undermined by, as it were, feeling insecure, so who gon beat my ass? (who want it goddamit??) Who wanna play judge loose and fast bc they got nothing but time on hand,
but still give a fuck about where a nigga land? Who the fuck out here with it like that? Can a nigga live? Can I live? Is it really possible for a nigga to piss off his therapist? Uhhhhhhh I’m just asking for a friend, try not to read too much into it. Can I live? Can I pull up on myself and disclaim whoever else voice it is that say my mistakes only why I exist too much and too loudly for me to question it? Can I exist in love of my own decisions? Can I hold my own hand under my weighted blanket? Forgiveness is a ghost to my mind, ever-fading from my sight with time. Out here happy and dying, that’s life. Savagery run it and I’m doing just fine. I’m doing just fine…Can I live? Smith and Wesson in my pocket, who gon beat my ass? Out here drunk and I don’t give a fuck. Who gon beat my ass? Say more, say less, it’s all the same. When it’s time to die we can meet outside to see who gon feel my pain. So who gon beat my ass?
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2. |
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I try to listen the way I wanna be listened to.
Dead the idea of the good dude. You only ever have the worth of yr word to prove. I try to listen the way I wanna be listened to,
but no one’s a friend to me just because they’re friends with you. I said it. We’re the ones with the most to lose in a move that leaves niggas no room to choose. I try to listen the way I wanna be listened to so once I’ve seen every face, I will know which ones were true. That’s subtext.
I don’t like being appraised. Don’t even fucking look at me nigga. Remember what I said about the everyday. At my big age I’ve learned how to behave, but the tests stay reinventing themselves always. I’m used to losing control and feeling detained
but the glow of my soul’s worth more to me than my name. I eat money for dinner every night. 30 racks over my head Alright!!!
Niggas are all industries favorite food, but some get stuck in tooth and stay there partially chewed. I try to listen the way I wanna be listened to so I don’t end up like the pigeon Vast Aire said never flew.
I said it.
Go check it.
I’m reppin.
My parents were contorted to build a future where their children get extorted
and, of course, we can’t bear to tell them their efforts were consumed in fire. The true consumption is that of the rich and I don’t mean on no trendy left shit. The tradition of their habit is all the fine print is. You think you understand ownership?
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3. |
Thumbsucker
02:01
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I been so down it look like up. So down, and yet, I couldn’t figure what it was. Hit the loud once, world opened up, and still learned none.
“Cookie Monster was a prisoner of war” is the kind of poem I like, the kind only God can write, the kind that spells out my life in the simplest terms that suffice. Before I pass the mic I’d like to share some advice: All you protect yrself from feeling will fuck with yr sense of being and become all you can see. A lor nigga was C-O-P-I-N-G by tryna stay out of sight w a thumb between my teeth. Always under my arm was my best friend, Cookie. But my Grandma, I think, feared that it would turn me sweet.
I been so down it look like up. So down, and yet, I couldn’t figure what it was. Chris woke up dead then I started to really bug. So depressed I was defunct. Asked to see someone, shit a dub. Felt like my folks aint give no fuck. None of us thought about my thumb.
You know whats funny to me, is this lil idea abt Cookie Monster getting tortured tatted on me. Think of Rambo in his flashbacks when he tied to a tree. Emotional assimilation feels similarly. We were apart most my life, turns out he got took from me. My Grandma gave him back once I secured my bachelors degree with nothing more than “Well you stopped sucking yr thumb, didnt ya?”
It went:
Crying
Thumbsucking
Depression
Screaming
Weed
Loud
Depression/Anxiety
420
Therapy
Escitalopram
Bupropion
But yea, I guess I turned out alright in the end, didn’t I?
(I detest all my discussions of I)
I been so down it look like up. So down, and yet, I couldnt figure what it was.
I did many drugs but never ever rode the bus.
No instead a nigga de-prioritizes his needs, disarmed by paranoid delusions that bring him to his knees. Growing out of character is how he spends the time in between, and therefore trapped inside a cycle of constant apology.
I been so down it look like up.
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4. |
Fucked Up If True
03:11
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I DON’T WANNA BE MY ENEMY
AND I CERTAINLY DON’T MEAN TO BE ALIENATING
*WINK WINK*
*WINK WINK WINK*
Fuck I look like wearing emotions like an ankle-weight or ball-and-chain and wading in the four-year blue tide just to have a side? What faith? We displaced, and I never asked to participate in this mistake, but I slap on a face like a blank slate as real estate for a projection field day. I’m sorry that my personal memories don’t predicate the greatness of the state. I guess I just wasn’t raised that way
*nyuh*
So we just gon always vote in false elections and accept each result and it’s effects as though people were powerless Do you feel supportive care? How do you wake up everyday? What enforced yr belief that you can vote their power away?
(okay now this part is about me wanting to just put it all aside and ~connect~ like y’all be talkin abt)
The degree to which you feel free is written in yr genes thru yr families history.
You so feasibly see how easy life could be
pushing on incrementally cus someone yr used to seeing is representing. While other learn to live in the smallest space life gives for so long that it aint shit to live and die inside of it.
But for others of us still there’s no more waiting for the will to come down from Capitol Hill, we just want weapons set to kill. Armed resistance in the streets of every vulnerable community!
Anarchist in the clothes, liberal in the polls.
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5. |
||||
Big plans! We got big big plans coming up in this mf. Six hands; it was six hands when we came with mathed up off the cuff, nigga and that took two years just to touch ears. I’m living in the next ten years while that shit here. Like, I can get touched before I get to really speak. Would you be surprised if I died next week? Many niggas, many minds can get through all 10 years of they 20’s with no time. Get a bullshit degree and a family and trauma’s still beating them within an inch of they life. Take ten hood niggas, put them in a line. Each be a genius off they own might.
You gon learn ten lessons you could apply. You gon learn what it really mean to survive.
Living on Juice Wrld Pop Smoke time, I’ll be in my future, come try to remove it. I live only for this, it’s how I must do it. There’s no way they can take what I say and skew it RIP CHYNNA MS TAYLOR AND MR ARBERY What can activate the rage that we be harboring? Aint nobody tryna kill me that hard to me. Like lemme get a gun and you can get it all from me.
How do I remember (they ask) what I spit out the tooth?(hmm) I don’t need to make mental notes when this shit is just the truth. But, what matters more, of course, is my resources. It’s chores until support, there’s no divorcing. I’m screaming through yr door, “we’ll take control by force,” and you gon watch me spit the world into the floor.
Big plans! We got big big plans coming up in this mf. Six hands; it was six hands when we came with mathed up off the cuff nigga, and that took two years just to touch ears. I’m living in the next ten years while that shit here. Like, I can get touched before I get to really speak.
What if I die next week?
Living on Juice Wrld Pop Smoke time, I’ll be in my future, come try to remove it. I live only for this, it’s how I must do it. There’s no way they can take what I say and skew it RIP CHYNNA MS TAYLOR AND MR ARBERY What can activate the rage that we be harboring? Aint nobody tryna kill me that hard to me. Like lemme get a gun and you can get it all from me.
RIP CHYNNA MS TAYLOR AND MR ARBERY What can activate the rage that we be harboring? Aint nobody tryna kill me that hard to me. Like lemme get a gun and you can get it all from me.
My mind be on 1m, a goldmine worth untold millions. If i get popped before it’s clear I’m hot of course there’ll be someone to fill in. So I try to live to fight another day,
the way my father say. Another day to live,
another day to give, of myself to everybody that I love and I am fucking with. 5 years ago, we said the same thing
about “today is another day.” 10 years ago we said the same thing, but today is “another day.” On god I get that and I’m with that, type beat “time stops for no man.” I’ve known my whole life where i stand. People either wringing necks or they fucking hands. I would’ve hit a fucking lick if I could evaporate, but as long as you live, I live, and you cannot kill me. 30 years ago we said the same thing
abt “today is another day.” 50 years ago we said the same thing but today is “another day.” Everybody wants their ideology to be the one that enslaves the world. We just left a century of artists whose screams went purposefully unheard. We live in the future. We die in the present. I have our next 2 shits in my mind already. We started conceiving in 2016 in a windowless van driving thru the desert. It took so much time, life, advice, and effort to make the first half of this shit come together. And this shit is mid compared to what I’m saying on The L. I was off the Durban Poison dreaming of my mom singing on Russell. 2028 has no guarantee, but I know my dream. I know my Mom’s dream. Even though I haven’t written I Know Now How Long You Have Searched, I know its power and I can’t die before it’s unearthed. Everyday we run from ourselves and from time, so much so our planning looks like we’ve lost our minds. But, our lives are wasted if we don’t even try, and it’s delicious every time it turns out I was right.
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6. |
||||
Trickle down driponomics yea the flipping of drip
My lil cousin just a kid but he getting the shit
From the cammers to the scammers nigga Teejayx6
Flipping the only way a nigga gon be coming up quick
Off White
Birkin
Telfar
niggas going hard
Yeezy
Nike
Supreme still hot to the hypebeasts
Shut up, put one in the air
Cus when I get it I get it out everywhere
Serving and slinging I’m not sitting scared
Elites don’t fight fair I got no time to care
40 years of reaganomics
Nigga this what we get
Nigga it is what it is
The world in service n shit
Deliver food we spit in
Can’t even cook for they kids
Yo my nigga stay flipping gear in a pinch
Reselling, upselling, I’m telling you
Labor to get comfortable is only for the gullible
Shut yr lip, cop a zip, or flip a shoe or two
StockX went retail off the riot loot
Aint nun as ugly as a balance in the red
I want bands on every politicians head
Fuck them niggas cus they stingy w the bread
We want blood instead and u can tell em what I said
What if they give me a chance
What if I flip my advance
Over again till I can’t
And the world been touched by my hand
MOTHER MARYROSE:
Fuck being good ima bad bitch
if he buying bags ima fuck him like a savage
I be popping tags cause a bitch living lavish
bitches going hate cause they know they can’t have this
ya
risking it all like a rockstar material girl bitch I’m copping it all
That is a fact, im speaking that raw
just my like bundles that flow to my drawls
unh
back on my shit don’t you forget i am that bitch
I’m popping my shit
bitches talk slick i pull out that stick it give her a kiss then it do a trick
it gotta be me if I’m rocking the Louie
they fuck with the drip
it’s wet like jacuzzi
I’m young and I’m ratchet I’m his favorite hoochie need me a new nigga who carry the toolie
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7. |
||||
My parents are good people, they deserve a healthy son. The way they raised me was a natural pathway to punk. Their support, of course, was privileged
but authoritarian. Issa lil complicated but I wouldn’t trade it for none. Pop Pop peaced, I got the Citizen, and it doesn’t quite fit my wrist. But I might still grow into it. I should’ve told him he’s the realest. And a nigga got no inheritance. Oma told me she dipped into it to pay the prison of retirement, and the abuse those in homes often get. I wouldn’t have found my own way if y’all raised a lesser man. Family history explains my choice and how I let the treatment stand. I’m, of course, culpable in how I let life come to pass, and I would rather pick out a switch than say why I sat on my hands. 5 years gone, justified away, left me a suicidal fanatic; the next 5 years spent at war with each and every accrued habit. Looking through family photo albums and thought, “All because of some freakin.” We weren’t always fighting to close the gaps in our independent streaks and I was especially closed off because of my outside social treatments. Age old omertàs chain us in iron-clad silent agreements. Then I learned some family secrets, and that trust gained gave me reason to share with them that I was seeking peace in death because I was fucking tweaking. That was back in 2017 when my anxiety was peaking panic attacks that were so frequent I’d pass out when they’d start creepin. Felt I had shit else to lose. I told my whole family the truth. I was having hands put on me paired with wild mental abuse. I’m just one nigga this happened to
and there’s four of us in this group, the statistic is 1 in 10 so the math right there for you to do. Obviously my family was worrying abt me. They watched me in my misery and troubling surroundings. I’m grown and could’ve phoned home and got over all my doubting, but I was in my head and couldn’t hear those thoughts over top of the shouting. I was keeping all my shit straight, bills paid whether or not I ate. With my style, it was no way for them to know I wasn’t safe. I learned that same night my grandma (Oma) lived that same life. That was half the surprise, my mom was there when she became Pop Pop’s wife. After that it was a little funny, she said, “You could’ve saved all of yr money. All that you spent on therapy, you’d still have, if you just came to me”
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8. |
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I’ll stand up to my mistrust, treating touch as love, and missing so much more as such. Then my expressions come out hushed. If that’s you too, hands up. I’m tryna see sum
You can’t call what gets put up with “love”
when that shit ain’t more than manipulating trust. You can’t call with what they put up, love. If that’s you too, hands up. I’m tryna see sum
Give these niggas everything they want
and still not recognize blessings as such.
Give these niggas what they don’t know they need and still somehow we don’t feel seen.
(BEARCAT)
THOUGH YOU HAVE A FEARLESS SIDE, AT TIMES SOMETHING IRRATIONAL SEEMS TO INTERFERE WITH YOUR PERCEPTIONS, ALTERING HOW YOU SEE THINGS.
Give these niggas everything we want
as we do the world in the ways we’re afraid of. Give these niggas what we don’t know we need, and then my Pattern tells me:
PERHAPS YOU’VE BEEN SHAMED OR RIDICULED FOR SPEAKING FOR YRSELF-OR MAYBE YOU JUST CANT PLACE YR FEARS, WHICH FEELS UNNERVING. TO OTHERS, YOU COULD SEEM CAUTIOUS OR HESITANT TO EXPRESS YRSELF. YOU END UP SHUTTING YRSELF DOWN.
Someone else’s love can’t be my reason to live.
Give these niggas everything we want and still not recognize blessings as such.
Give these niggas what we don’t know we need and still my pattern tells me how I take everything personally isn’t worth explaining man it’s fucking embarrassing.
Treatments named love to me, palmprints placed on my face forcefully…I can feel them still between my inner cheek and my teeth. In my memories I feel them straddling me while I sleep. I’ve tried to remove myself; it’d kill this in me at least.
Simultaneously there’s everything I’ve always carried, I subpoena people that I’ve hurt to then comfort me. Why should they come back to me? I’m on the edge of my seat. It’s my potential as progress now.
Why should they feel differently?
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9. |
We Wants Revenge
02:23
|
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I’m so bored by the left, protests, and the reluctance to militarize. No one’s left blind by eye for an eye unless you make the same mistake twice. I was in 3rd grade and very fucking afraid on the day i was “radicalized.” It was 9/11, I was 9, and it was the first time my dad’s mortality was in front of my eyes.
I’m so bored by the left, protests, and the reluctance to militarize. No one’s left blind by eye for an eye unless you make the same mistake twice. Peace is still a part of my ideal life, if our first record’s vibe is still on yr mind. In this ongoing genocide, these whites will try, and they can chat with my .9
I want my mf childhood back. Intuition, not nationalism, tells me I’m under attack. When my sister and me finally got picked up by my Dad, he showed us DC on TV and talked to us while we sat. He said,
“This is what people do to each other” I was raised on love for the other, but that’s not the language that the world wanna use. So we be switching the shoes, cus no one know what to do (to) deescalate and diffuse. Welcome! Welcome! Will you accept their crumbs? Or shed yr liberalism
and claim yr freedom?
Was I supposed to believe the country that killed Dr. King and stay pledging allegiance to a symbol of hate every morning? This shit is so basic, it’s highkey embarrassing, and still too much for some people to receive.
I was in 3rd grade and very fucking afraid on the day i was “radicalized.” It was 9/11, I was 9, and it was the first time my dad’s mortality was in front of my eyes. I’m so bored by the left, protests, and the reluctance to militarize. No one’s left blind by eye for an eye unless you make the same mistake twice.
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10. |
||||
Every morning we congregate on top of this mass grave that we call a nation. With each step snakes w their minds imprisoned in hellfire hiss at me about taking the high ground. I try to behead them with my heel with each step.
For 15 years I looked at life as what luck did, despite my talks with myself that ended with “fuck it.” I’m talking from the time a nigga first tried to kill himself, before any effort was made to understand my mental health.
One day I smoked and drank everything and put John J in my mouth. Just to know the feel, nigga. Just to know the taste of the steel, nigga, and in any hand this put the bunnies on any real nigga. But in my mf hand this shit gon erase a gravy seal, nigga. Fuck the inbreds up in Fish and fuck the fucking 26th. Fuck Jim Kenney he frail as shit and folds too quick to suck rich dick. It’s been fuck right-wing off the rip but still liberals are more dangerous.
Sworn enemies, fake friends, I wanna kill them all.
Punk pig police fun is making niggas suffer, doing fuck all they want with they badge numbers covered. Stuck in a world constantly assessing the worth of a life, in the backward system of capitalism, I fetch a low ass price. Northeast rednecks with bats fight with police backup around the corner, marching down Girard knowing the precinct gonna escort them. Outside playing pretend soldier because they think the force will court them, standing tall on target stores thinking they snipers (and) not fucking corny. Anyone who’s on reform is really an informant. I take the bullet, you take the ballot, peaceful protest is fucking boring. Between torching PD’s and taking knees omg I choose the former. You can eat this dick and swallow the whole clip on god and on Chris Dorner.
Sworn enemies, fake friends, how can you tell the difference? (I wanna kill you all)
What I think, what I say, what I ideate: 3 weights, 3 needs to medicate. Who I am, where I am every time I wake…eyes open and again the dream was fake. Eyes open and again I’m tempting fate. Eyes open and again I am unsafe. Eyes open and again I’m on 15th seeing 20 police run toward me to protect a bank. I know where my house is, Mike. I’m tryna set a fire tonight. I wanna see a blaze that reaches a height it can lick Heaven and catch the blind eye of Christ.
Kathryn:
Who is my real family
Why should we go on
A world made for no one
Darkness can heal all
Taking you all with me
No use in running
The flames, they grow higher
Wash away your sins
Firm grip
Let fly
There’s nothing I can’t fix
Pocket solution
No sense
No use
Now it’s just down to me
Darkness can heal all
Zula:
Knee deep on the corner, thought of freedom on it
Took rock and rolled back , threw the steez on it
Broke the chains and I told em I'll never fear
Bloody murder, sheer terror, had to hold tears
In my liberated drip while the coast clears
Marginalized marks on the wall
Yell off the walls and rebel
Sheer terror
Bloody murder
Tears of the ghetto
Don’t call me important, just start dying in my place.
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11. |
GODBLESSYALLREALGOOD
03:00
|
|||
Fuck me? Oh, okay. Alright, fuck me, then. Bet! I was met with silence when I reached out to you-shrug, oh well, we could’ve worked things out ourselves. If I never see y’all again I guess I’ll see y’all in hell and forever clean blood off myself. You ever know someone who makes the world they sidekick? It’s dap and smiles from every clique when they come round to visit? If I was still 16 I’d talk about how I was sickened to know that he could do no wrong, and I was just the fat kid. If I could talk to 16 year old me I’d be like “yr too young to get this, but you need to be flexible with all yr future visions. Everyone around you is showing you their true intentions and you’ll have just yrself to blame if you don’t learn to listen.”
These bitch ass niggas dont give a fuck.
So I guess this is how its got to be? Word life, I’m dead to y’all, y’all dead to me. I got the county tatted on me twice, you wanna see? Wish I could look over y’all shoulder when this gets a read. You had to insulate yr mans from Big Bad Pierce, as though he wasn’t my mans too and for him I too feared. You couldn’t see a way our friendship wouldn’t end in tears, but all of this is an assumption. We aint speak in years.
I wanted all you niggas up with me. I wanted to include everybody. Y’all content to live it out in Calvert County, and I was straight up wrong to look down on it. But you can’t understand what had happened at that party that y’all had for Chris. You were too lit to remember it. You fail yrself each day you live and thats why I call you bitch, I betcha.
I was a bitch too, I was slow to move. They felt they couldn’t trust me and that shit was true. How you think it made them feel to see me around you? And it was never too soon to step into they shoes.
I wanted to handle this together like we always do...or did...shit…
We’re disposable? Bitch fuck all y’all. I was tryna pass the ball. Bitch fuck all y’all. I was playing against the wall. Bitch fuck all y’all. Solidarity is a loaded word, I learned, when one of the girls was like “we dont like her.” You’ll never know how deep that shit cut when I heard. I got two in the hand for you, you fucking bird. Me and Lea are cool and y’all abandoned her too. Me and Nat are cool and y’all abandoned them too. Sometimes I wonder how it seems to you from yr point of view, bc only inside my pain can I be that comfortable. I wept when I wrote this, but I’ll laugh again, even if it’s just at all the lessons in the end. And I was lucky to preserve my presence as a friend, but it aint lost on me I was the darkest-skinned.
For so long the grief was beyond tears perforated by silence, denial, and merely
spreading the processing across years.
Yea, detachment can be weird.
The wedding pictures and baby pictures do too well to remind me of the friends that so easily left us behind.
These bitch ass niggas don’t give a fuck
I know yr heart despite all of this, because you couldnt go thru with it. But I guess “best friend” was just bullshit, because it didnt have to be like this. That’s why I call you bitch, I betcha.
|
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12. |
||||
I’ve prepared myself for anyone in my life to leave, and focused much too much on exit strategies for me. I never said I’m brought a greater peace of mind from this technique, but goddamit I’m locked in habit and I never expected to get free.
Lojii:
Make it count,
take your shot
when you, play the block
play it cool, don't make it hot
You might have to flip a key
You might have break a lock
Keep a tight circle
free my cousin out that box
See, on my block
they don't hide it in they sock
Empty viles milly rock
all over the blacktop
Where they quick to shoot they neighbor
before they shoot at the cops
who keep spinnin like the clock
never stop
Where eviction notices be on the top lock,
so if i lose my roof,
ain’t talkin’ bout a drop top
My neighbors cookin up they rent,
but no not in no crockpot,
got all the smoke,
they love to turn the block into a hotbox,
Non-stop, police posted on the corner
steady lurkin’
like the corner boys won’t go inside
the corner store to serve ya,
Who want what & who need what?
Got it, go & place your order
& you better keep a burner for extorters
McKinley:
Uhhh I been hanging round here uhhh,
Way too much,
Most of y’all Bruce Wayne’s look uhhh,
Way klu klux,
Y’all don’t know how to break outta here?
Oh well shucks,
I guess relying on you niggas,
Was my true crutch,
Sheesh,
Crucifix a nigga locked to the beam
Street lights got a staple for every year they’ve seen
Me and my niggas use its power to (carry out) our schemes,
So I guess that’s why I’m used to suns warmth on me,
But the rays grew wings on my back,
And I look to the ground,
My peoples feathers aint in tact,
From sticky situations, to blickies up on vacation,
Either way the hand is hot,
And I don’t keep my peoples waiting,
My niggas know cuz Marxism more than Karl’s corpse,
Cause the language that they use,
Came directly from the source,
So for now, we extend our hand,
Shadow on its course,
Gripping everything the light touch, directly from the porch,
I pray you never get a glimpse of my stance,
You better head for the hills when I do my lil dance cuz!
I thought this rapping would calm the insanity,
Instead extend ya hand with this power, causes calamity,
Shit!
Fuck!
I became vigilant through hypersensitivity; something as small as a sigh can become a tell to me. While relearning to trust my mind I recognized I still knew sincerity
through the people who simply never sent me down the line of its questioning. My man Don in OKC once spoke to my relationships through my mentality.
He said “the problem with Black nationalism is that everything is a conspiracy..”
It’s a spiritual level of gang shit and y’all don’t know the niggas I hang with.
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