De La Kufi

(album: Secrets & Escapes - 2019)

[Brother Ali:]
Speak to the people over the horn
Like Fela Kuti in my favorite kufi
I took a vow to spray the uzi til the day they do me
Do the right thing ain't a movie to me
Appear horny if you ain't raisin the stakes, then what you saying to me
I shoot the hard eight spit street nine
Hypocrites trying to Bogard whats mine to bolster your shine
Y'all got lines in your costumes and cast rooms
This is incense in the back room kicking your next tattoo
The big man ship has officially landed
Steady laying hands on this [bleep] planet
A full-blown fan and always one of the baddest
That's just part and parcel of my starving artist status
The hunger for greatness is utterly ageless
Bubble up on your playlist dumping blood on the pavement
You're playing with some bonafide born troubadours
Bursting through the studio doors hunting for superstars
Confiscating all pros who smack around and fanny pack for rapping over vocals
We keep surviving, weaving and bobbing
Increasing involvement and feasting and fawning
While neat people party, the inmates are free in the asylum
How not to be a product of this weak ass environment
Y'all gotta feel me though the mic hand is regal
The light beams will reach you, they can heal a broken people
Regardless of the freeze we on the good shit still
All eyes shukka Sean P and Bushwick Bill

(We are the good man
Yeah son
Trust me
Are I a blood clot him
And he just listen to what may I say)

[Talib Kweli:]
Check it
Time favors the spit kickers and rhymesayers
Ev and Ali is my family, they stay in my prayers
Moving on up like Dave Chappelle and John Mayer
Singapore eating a steam cake that's nine layers
Promoters owe so all my notes be promissary
Tom and Jerry rappers don't want none like monasteries
I'm honorary every verse is a doctorate
Collecting PhDs over degrees that doctors get
Where we live ain't just a trap they had to seal us off
The money, power, and respect is what they kill you for
I'm still involved even if the tried to kill us all
You a flash in the pan, you not hot, that's just a menopause
Passport pimping on the plane soon as I get a call
It's like, ever since I was born a nigga been absorbed
Felocci Rios band for that Dutch river fall
Till writing iron made us tag graffiti on Brazilian walls
My elevation is high, you're just peaking
A mountain of rhymes you need a Sherpa just to reach them
Or read him, cause when you see him you start bleeding from your eyes
Though I'm seeing from third, I never needed your reply
Leave you wheezing on the curb, just for speaking to me wrong
We ain't friends just cause you rap, we don't have to get along
That's gonna have to be okay, go ahead and make a diss record
Rap your little heart out, feel better

That's a little rhyme, get that rhyme?
I put that rhyme in because quite often dropouts come in to catch the show
Them dumb ass dropouts like those rhymes