Yo, what the f** happened to hip hop?
It used to be about lyrics but the wit stopped
And all the true wordsmiths keep their lips locked
So every time some new sh** drops, it's a rip-off
It's safe to say that I'm pissed off and mad chafed
From being rubbed the wrong way by rappers with bad taste
I'd like to place the rap game in a gla** case
And think of the days when Drake only made snack cakes
Back when LMFAO was a typo –
Before the whole game rhymed Michael with psycho
When Romeo was a tingle in Master P's nutsack –
Now all you punks do is sag your jeans, showing bu*t crack
Yo – f** that! It's time I waged a war;
Rewrote the anthem for our nation, replayed the chords
I'm making swords from a ma**ive vocabulary
So even ninjas are like “OH SNAP YOU SCARY.”
You whack characters are due for a kick in the crotch
I'm through making simple videos in the garage
I'm here to creep on feeble people like Nicki Minaj
Until the nasty overrated b**h is a frickin' mirage
Or lickin' my dick in a box – Timberlake style
I'm mad but fashionably flashin' a fake smile
Cuz I've been puttin' up with this garbage for a great while
And now I'm goin' all the way; like, further than Eight Mile
But there's a lot of you, so this could take a while
You're all the same like Summer leaves, let me rake a pile
I'm tastin' bile cause this kinda mess makes me sick
Erase the files at the sight of this mainstream sh**
I'll be the new form of fed, forget Cash Money
I'll take the groupies off your hands, too. C'mere and smash, honey
You think rap is dead? That's funny
So you won't mind if I grab it out from under your f**in' a**, dummy
CHORUS:
They got the genre soundin' so sad
Plenty swagger, but no cla**
I'm grabbin' the industry by the gonads
Silly rapper, these are throwbacks for cromags
Never thought I'd strive to be a hip hop genius
If I had a crystal ball, I still couldn't have seen this
A steel-bit extremist hooked to an intravenous of heaviness;
If I wasn't screamin', I acted squeamish
But MC's of the meanest demeanor in the arena
Gleamed to me and stood out like a cryin' hyena
Tecca Nina and Sage Francis
Beckoned me with their Strange antics
Now I'm rippin' it wickedly, so pray, mantis
Cause I'll be squashing em like bugs when I come through –
Blasting through atmospheres like slugs from a gun, dude
Wreckin' it every second and sellin' records while you're still
Checkin' the mic like “testing, 1, 2, 1, 2.”
We used to think that rap was all about glamour and glitz
Cause we was only exposed to MC Hammer and sh**
The underground teams with better themes
Your mainstream is a scheme and I'm not pandering, b**h
Just look at this lunacy – a vision injured brutally
Co-ops like Doomtree are still displaying it beautifully
But hip hop needs to be a community again
If we collab wit our vocab, who do we offend?
Let's battle-rap the cattle back into the stalls to reeducate
The heavy hitters as well as the featherweights
Teach ‘em all to levitate above the negative space
Cause love's a decadent taste
And the record can't afford another second of wasted tape
Face your fate, naysayers
Resurrect your 1988 tape players and re-rap the story
Use this as a cheat sheet
Rap's not dead, it's just in a deep sleep
And I'm the sandman, rattling magic dust with battle lust
I'm brighter and abstract like Atticus
But dark enough to make an old lady go goth
So listen up, and turn your f**ing radio off
I remember everything I heard when I was growing up
Nastradamus, Kim the Queen, Dre and X were blowing up
The Fugee-La, the House of Pain, the Wu-Tang Dynasty
They say the game has changed, but the old one sounded fine to me
When real hustlers working the streets developed real life stories and put the words to the beats
I can respect the newcomers to certain degrees, but most of it stinks, and needs a f**in' squirt of Febreze
And since the f** when was rappin' all about image?
Y'all cling to it like you were Popeye and the swag was spinach
You've all got gimmicks, but nothing to show for it
Aside from an audience that's like “yo, this is so boring.”
I'm not writing a beef track, let's set it straight –
But I can't help it like the 5, 6, 7, 8's
If what I hear on the radio gives me a reddened face
And a headache so bad I can't f**in' hear myself meditate
And yes, I fully expect a bunch of hatin' folk
To say some negative sh** cause they never learned to take a joke
“Yo, I'mma do a rail of coke and smash your anklebone with a safety cone if you don't leave Nicki Minaj and Drake alone!”
It ain't about them, though, they're just examples
Of what happens when something delicate is mishandled
Sure, it can be dismantled and put together again
But then they wanna ask where all the damned integrity went
“I swear to God I saw it roll under the coffee table
But even with the missing parts, it's running oddly stable…
And no one really seems to notice, f** it, call it a wrap
And let the deaf consumers fall in the trap.”
To hell with that
Press the forward bu*ton on your ca**ette deck
Whether you're gangster or working cla** or you might be a redneck
Put your pa**ion into something unstoppable like music
Cause rap's only dead if we stop giving life to it
CHORUS:
They got the genre soundin' so sad
Plenty swagger, but no cla**
I'm grabbin' the industry by the gonads
Silly rapper, these are throwbacks for cromags