Overture

(album: ELEVATION - 2019)

I use the mic like a walkie-talkie
Cali love with a bite of Milwaukee
DMV in my bloodline, I done start wars with a jabberwocky
Eye of the tiger, call a nigga Rocky
The finish line between humble and cocky
Use verse and rhyme to extend the time for others
Crumble every clock I see with a twelve following behind my brothers
Call me the mothership, my music for the mothers
I been a motherfucker
Undercover like a super man, make a woman wonder
Make a hater my lover
But, equally, I been a rubber band without elasticity
Been a trap man drastically stuck in the gutter
A fallen star never to be discovered
An inmate with a number but orange was never my color
Double my entendre
Rap 'til I can sell my bars to the highest sucker
R&B money wrapped in a young thugger
Keep my beats on repeat like they stu-stutter
Pretty on some Ali
I done become the Thrilla in Manila
New Jack City on some pain, probably
Call a brother Duh Duh Duh
But my train done been wobbly as any other
Big body truck in the mud
Or the feet that grew from the concrete
'Til I'm big as Jigga and the nigga he came up under
I went from notorious to glorious
I flew above them storms, wrestling with thunder
'Til I be one, a Neo-Morpheus
And by the time I be six I knew I was more than his
Is what it is, this is how I feel
Like a one-man force of a nature strong in my mind
'Til you go on-line ordering my kind to savage your shit
And with them lines I just spit I hope you're recording this skit
This ain't no average shit
I'm hood-born, a dark form with a candlestick
I'm rocking with the good Lord and His manuscript
The ghost of the too-poor-to-rock-sandals kid
And before I could handle all of this
I was hard to walk a mile in my own shit
A prodigal smile with a poem losing that glow it used to give
I was two roads diverged, I chose the narrowest
I done seen them doors close like pharaohs did
I been the afterparty to my own show, ya dig?
I just needed to know, can I live?
Like Hov did way back when
Then lo and behold, these old wings found some wind
Dealt with the stings from them arrows I felt within
And elevated to where them sparrows been
'Til that became equal with the skies them eagles swim
But if height reflects how slight life done slipped
I been right with the lowest of the invalid
No fight left in my battleship
A kite with broken ribs
Bleek Gilliam with a busted lip
No Mo' Better Blues, just a permanent bruise where the horn used to fit
Low like where the throw up is
Low like a roach's crib
Low like slow to get up on the count of ten
To keep it all the way five hundred, low as your basement, wasted
Dazed and too confused to find my placement
Nightmares of degradation
When I was a kid I used to dream of this kind of graduation
Now I'm on some Tom Hanks, I done got too big, but
Still a bad boy getting paid for them toys
I play station, I give thanks
And use God's noise as a celebration
I'ma sing with that thing for your soul's masturbation
I'ma bring enough king to control your manifestation
And you gon' scream with anticipation
While you turn from all the lil' boy-girls they play on your radio stations
This man done reappeared when the world is filled with fear and intrepidation
The screen got the same scene
It just seems too many Elvises done left the building to believe the motivation
The people fiending for that old feeling
So the big Tank just pulled back into the station
This time with a blue and red light in the basement
This that new height we chasing
I'm here to serve you with a new found dedication
Same food for thought through sound, just made it where you can better taste it
Use what I sing now and never for the best of nations
And the rest for the ones brown who don't feel blessed enough to make it
I done cleaned the mess up, no more crying
Just a brave lion standing atop Mount Zion
I come to you open and naked
I come to you knowing without hesitation
Fifty thousand waiting for my shit
I'ma give you every last drop of it
Until we all on the same trip to destination
Come fuck with it, my elevation