If I'd have known when I was young
that being woken up would lead me to going nuts
I never would have ever even started smoking blunts.
I would have just clung to my slumber.
Never would have read Jensen's “Endgame,” straight up.
I'd have said Daniel Quinn's damn book sucks -
nobody gonna listen to a monkey.
I'd pop a blue pill cause the red pill got me feeling ugly.
I would give my left brain if I could abstain
from having these feeling that I'm stuck with
but no matter how numb I make myself,
I can't escape myself.
I'm dealing with this culture's fucked-up-edness.
I'm getting rusty, sitting by the river doing nothing,
or else I'm in the city doing dumb shit.
All the courage I can muster
doesn't cut the mustard -
we need to pick it up on the double.
I dropped the album,
and everybody around me was proud of me
like I finally come out with something that sounds okay,
but I'm the only one who knows
what comes out of me comes from out of me.
You're hearing God talking through my mouth,
I mean. I'm just a vessel for the message;
I'm actually getting fed up with it
but I could never stop, I could never give up.
I'm saying what's been said before,
it's just math but it makes sense
to make it a metaphor for life
when on I'm on stage gripping the mic,
kicking the rhymes I’ve written,
I've been convinced that it's right.
I bring the light to the dark like a torch does,
spitting out the fire like it's poison -
I'm just a voice with an intricate mind
combined with evidence.
Scientific studies have been published
and I have read them.
I'm talking about re-evaluating everything.
How long till we all gonna come around
like a wedding ring?
We need love and trust; we need empathy.
It's about us. This is not about history.
We can't judge who we're meant to be;
maybe if our family tree was diseased
we've got the remedy.
The members of this generation
could be the medicine that the earth needed
for recovery - then, we would be
the answers to the questions that we're asking.
We could be the clues to the mystery.
If action is louder than activism,
I can't attack with this rap -
I let my effort speak,
and if we have to get out of the trap we're in,
no rest till we get our freedom.
But we go crazy holding up
the weight of the world -
that's a great way to turn
old friends into enemies,
like I can't tell the difference...
maybe I've gotten trapped in the big picture
like that chick in “The Witches,”
and I can't snap out of it.
I've gone mad and I can't back down from it.
I'm so sad that I can't laugh out of it -
flat on my back on the mat
and I can't tap out of it.
But real recognize real, right?
If you wanna help, ask,
“What can I give? Like,
how can I live in a way that's gonna heal life?”
We gonna fix up the mess
that's been left in our hands, for sure.
If it's a gift or a curse we've been given,
I don't know.
Am I a jerk, or have I got a vision, or both?
I'm tryna figure out this mission
and then give it a go
and put in work till I give up the ghost.
Whoa....
Here I stand at the precipice.
“Life's difficult; it's not effortless,” Peck said it.
But I'll be damned if I ever quit;
got my fist lifted to the heavens
till I never take a breath again.
It's for the bottom of the pyramid, represent.
It's for my ancestors.
I'm an anarchist.
It's the truth,
it should be self-evident,
but check out the television,
we are not relevant, so,
y'all should turn the box off quick.
They gon brainwash y'all,
make my stomach feel nauseous.
That's why I try to not watch it;
let 'em go ahead with the program.
I ain't gotta know how it ends.
I already know what it is,
so I ain't gotta know how it ends.
Y'all should turn the box off quick.
They gon brainwash y'all,
make my stomach feel nauseous.
That's why I try to not watch it;
that's how you know you getting programmed.
You know what it is.