[Verse 1]
We were working on a mixtape
Now your in my memory with a Magic Jersey and a thizz face
Jordans on your feet, clenched fists on the table
Where you mimicked each beat ba** popping through Ableton
Pounding every 808, tickling every hi hat
You couldn't freestyle rap but your charisma hijacked
The cypher and I find that my freestyles are quite wack
Without your adlibs reverberating the climax
How do you remember someone whose gone
When memory disintegrates in trembling fog?
Cuz your beats I still have sound like ghosts escaping speakers
And I'm on your facebook just to puzzle your facial features
Together but pixelated perceptions are not authentic
When the joy you made contagious is no longer infectious
Mental marionettes I can't lose you in small talk
If i carry your d**h, the burden will make my heart stop
[Hook]
My hearts behind these bars this is cardiac arrest
This is cardiac arrest
[Verse 2]
Hip-hop began as an expression of oppression
Subversive with a purpose, a lesson and a message
When blacks represented as k**ers on TV
Rap was opportunity to view them creatively
But then Viacom and MTV, decided to commercialize the industry
It's a jungle sometimes it makes me wonder how they keep from going under
The siege of prison industrial complex, perennial process, to keep the colors in shutters distract you with bomb threats
And 90 percent of what we watching is controlled by six media conglomerates who pocket what is profited
And they have stocks within the hip-hop market and the margins of the private prison complex, now I'm vexed
So whats lucrative? rappers intellectuality, or these gangsta rappers who endorse criminality
The medias attempt at constructing a reality, but really its financially enamoring a fantasy
And hammering insanity inside of our morality, the prosecutors knocking with a lock em up mentality
Tryna vandalize and sanitize minds, while shows like Law & Order just romanticize crime
The black and brown people portrayed as drug dealers, when majority of d** are consumed by white people
And 2.3 million people are in prison
5.1 are under correctional supervision
So they're dropped into a dark abyss hard to be an optimist when they cops find em hop skotchin lock em and stop and frisk
This is a wake up call to not forget Chicago d**hs
To every Oakland kid who lost his breath on project steps
We find the crisis then twerk around it like Miley Cyrus
When it's easier to get a gun than a driver's license
And I'm living in a bubble an internal shell
If I got charged for battery I can't endure a cell
Get it? Charged, battery, Duracell
But my bars aren't important when these steel bars burn in hell
[Hook]
[Verse 3]
Blasting off like an astronaut
This is the story of teaching at Juvenile hall
We drove past golf courses and suburbs
To law forces and shutters, from Hogwarts to the gutter
Tried to come in without a preconceived design
So I could peep it, seep it up, and reconstruct my mind
At first we were met by silence
An ambivalence, with mean mugs defending their shyness
Nervous that their writing wasn't spoken outspokenly
I told em there's no bouldering between rap and poetry
Then we had that Cypher in the corner
They told me I was ga**in em, a natural performer
Felt good being told I'm a fire MC
But little did they know they were inspiring me
Prisons maintained so privately
While their feelings restrained so privately
His poem from the perspective of a black Camaro
During a drive by, I felt it in my bone marrow
But he ripped it up and kicked the dust as if we'd frown upon it
Wish he knew that his reality was valid as a sonnet
But the censorship is endless made to feel like their expression is identified
As senseless desensitized and helpless
To gentrify the images that's put in their brains
And I tried to empathize but I couldn't relate
He's 17 with 2 kids and 15 with 2 nines
I'm 19 with 16s, that can't reach their true lives
They asked me bout college and I paint them a scene
Salivating over freedom that had came in a dream
Glossy distant eyes visualizing a different life
If they switched the glitch and tides when impulses improvised
Internalized their fist of pride till open palms itch at night
Blaming themselves when their clipped inside the system's lies
What is crime? I didn't see it in his eyes writing letters to a son that yet to materialize
What is crime? I didn't find it in the smile of a boy whose tear ducts are duct taped by denial
I guess my missions to split em with lyricism rid em from mental prism give lenses for better vision whose ending this bitter schism injecting my criticism tried to diagnose the problem its limitless but don't give in, listen