Markings - Keep Me Down lyrics

I had a vision where I kept on spitting teeth out In my palm a neverending pile Had me creeped out Speaks loud 'bout the fear of not keeping my word I respect the pa**ionate That other sh**'s for the birds Bunch of bucktoothed f**mooks Catch a quick one-two Guatemalan Sun Tzu This is what it's come to Anything lost can be found Except for time wasted A direct hand towards your own annihilation I'll be your scapegoat Pin the world's woes onto me Case closed I don't care, I'm living comfortably Carry the burden of art Learned it was ours Used the devices in my arsenal Assembled these bars (what else?) Fragmented moments from the memories decayed How can you sleep at night when your energies were saved? Accumulate a lifetime's worth of lifelines That I kept safe Just in case I lost my right mind We are alive in the strangest times Major declines But with more openings than ever So I take it in stride The problem's in the heart of men Who are convinced they can break it down like cartilage Screaming that they gotta win Strictly partisan to to the cause I broke all ten commandments just to follow up the 48 laws Go ahead and scream it loud: No matter how hard you push me Y'all won't ever, ever keep me down I wanna show you where my spirit dwells Not every single part of you should be put up for sale Skip the details For your consideration these are pieces of myself From as high as heaven's peak Down to the recesses of hell My recollections from the old tenement days When fam dukes broke even Making minimum wage Stationed out on 21st Northside of the Met Never lacked food, clothes or shelter Everything blessed I had a bowl cut And while everyone was running 'round trying to get fresh I was like: "so what" I was more concerned with building up a universe And reading through the lies to figure out just what the truth was worth Turns out it wasn't much No one gave a motherf** And then it hit me with the force of an uppercut I was so naive But some of the things I've seen I swear to god you have no idea A disemboweled cat Guts dangling on a loading dock The frozen glares of many A love that was scalding hot I've seen the California sunset Swam the Rio Dulce From strokes of genius to "how could I be so stupid?" Such is the duality that lives in us all The sort of thing that makes you wanna give up the ball I find solace in the chaos It's just a part of the game So play on, playa I stay on the radar The space-case stoner by the corner bodega Got on for dolie, brought my cronies I don't owe 'em no favors This is for everyone who's been pushed to the fringe But never let being excluded taint the feeling within I'ma get my Bob Marley on Filled to the brim And elevate with my audience Do it again If they could only see me now No matter how hard you tried Y'all can never ever keep me down