lyrics
I have no epiphanies for you, nothing poetic or prettier for you,
nothing to hide in a simile or award-winning aesthetic symmetry for you.
Tell a kid, “This authority’s comin from havin to live it or witness it for you.”
and some of em say to me, “Look, Mr. Levin, twenty other teachers did this before you.”
Huh...damn...that’s always when I take a moment to breathe,
Remember we haven’t been treatin these children as more than a quota of needs
or usin em to grow our reputation, and then taking the credit for sowing the seeds. deaf to those pleas, nothing can drag all the air out the room quite like hope when it leaves.
Rollin up sleeves, writin these songs with a scalpel from thorax to groin,
Stuck in the talk bout the talk, until we off fishing for beef just to throw back the point.
Ironic how they tried to keep themselves together by burnin they bones after joints.
Ironic I felt so much happier back when I considered Prozac a choice.
Anger was like an attack dog, didn’t let go once it latched on.
If you start strippin the violence out of these rhymes, what’s left is a sad song.
My life in the deck--started prayin the dealer had ran outta bad cards.
At my happiest furious, backwards, unworthy, and writin the words in these raps wrong.
[HOOK]
Paid my dues, and I still came back to feed the meter.
I don’t got the answers. I don’t need em, either.
even If I had em, I wouldn’t believe em, neither.
I don’t got the answers. I don’t need em, either.
Flattened knuckles on these tracks until they cracked and buckled,
eyes Jekyll wide finding out that Hyde was fashioned from you.
First cut went past the muscle, in your head, the cannons rumbled,
you relaxed, actin humble, tunnel vision a plasma puzzle.
Writin bars, and flexed your posture, pencil scratchin down your life
Tired arms were treadin water, then you practiced drowning twice.
Flinched, then winced, and tried to wash those butcher’s hands of power’s price.
Used defensive self-reflection in the mirror, counting Christs.
Snappin vinyl outta spite the only time you pressed a record. Extended
helping hands, knew your reach could either be stretched or severed.
Desperate times, desperate measures, some of you packed blades sharp
enough to carve a twenty-four-karat heart out the chest of pressure.
Untamed as affection when your love language is vengeance,
Before violence can lay its hands upon the front page, it’s kinetic.
Therapy or surgery, either way you bout to open up, or that
one way toward the exit--but it’s blocked by what you won’t confront.
credits
from
Trapdoor,
released November 23, 2021
(A. Levin, D. Zunikoff)
license
all rights reserved
