Now I know niggas with triggas
Cocked and ready go gettas
My man got dimed and did time
And all my sons on the shine
Yo son, I got the answer
Lack of melanin is cancer
Melatonin when you’re home and alone
Your cover’s blown
Classified and unknown
Yo, what’s the password?
My old man’s last words labeled as absurd
But my spirit knew
“Yes, the peel ripens to black
But we aim for the blue”
We, the sea sons of Atlantis
Grace the night with our hue….
I am closer to where I want to be than I ever have been and experience more internal doubt than I ever have.
I think I should aim at nothing more than ridding myself of lying, negative attitudes, trying to control how people see me, overconcern about what others think of me, dishonest expression of emotions, trying to possess that which isn’t mine, false humility, lack of discipline: physically, mentally, spiritually and of all that leaves me incapable of giving and receiving love.
Simply, I don’t have to try to be a poet or how I imagine a poet should or would be. I don’t even have to write, as long as I am honest to each moment rather than to my ideas of myself.
I had black coral around my neck
So I could only see the sea
Its salted water in my eyes
Parade as tears
The dancing girls
March down my cheeks
Twirling my fears
But the band
Plays on and on
Despite the years
1998
Every morning
I rise and face
The firing squad
Every morning
There is one
Who holds his fire
His dilemma
Is my system of belief
They fire rounds
But I am seldom
In their circle
A quiet mind
Is labeled “sound”
And colored purple
My little girl
Has not yet learned
To color within lines
Her jumbled diction
Has not yet learned
Our contradiction
We speak of art
With flaming passion
Then do work
Void of compassion
And wonder why reality
Is bleeding fiction
Nigga, you better drink
Half a gallon of Shaolin
Before you pluck the strings
Of my violin
My life is orchestrated
Like London symphony
Concentrated
Niggas waited and waited
I’m birthday wishes, belated
I write in red ink
That turns blue
When the book closes
In 1972
My mother was rushed
From a James Brown concert
In order to give birth to me
My style is black whole
Most niggas simply sound like earth to me
If hip-hop were the moon
I’d be the first to bleed
Cyclical sacraments of self
For all my peers to read
I recite the hues of night
With spots of light
For you to read by
Have you floating
On cloud nine
Without realizing
It’s mind’s sky
And the ground
On which you walk
Is the tongue
With which I talk
I speak the seeds
That root the trees
Of suburbia New York
City streets
Could never claim me
That’s why I never sound like you
All these niggas
Claim the streets
As if paths through the woods
Ain’t true
You better walk your path
You better do your math
’Cause your screw face
Will only make the Buddha laugh
Even if you know your lessons
You don’t know the half
But don’t take it from me
Son, take a bath
I was walking down Fifth Avenue today when Russell Simmons came out of a building and crossed right in front of me.
Is that the same as a black cat?
They are preparing
To introduce me
To their god
I will simply ask him
Whether he’d like to join
Our entourage
“Show him to his room!”
Let him rest
For we rise early
And no god
Is gold enough
To tempt the darkness
From these mines
The universe gives us every opportunity, lays the perfect path of obstacles, that through overcoming them we will have achieved the perfect balance and thus achieve the ultimate alchemical mixture of the God composite.
Dear God,
I wasn’t breast-fed and most of my conversations with men seem to revolve around music. I’m no musician, but the pain has been instrumental. My senses: finely tuned instruments of being lonely, of being loved, of being hue man. I’m no musician, but my life seems to be orchestrated by the likes of women.
Leading a new lover
To the dance floor
Is like taking your intended
To meet your parents
You hope everything works out
That there is no miscommunication
1999
Cancel the apocalypse!
Cartons of the Milky Way with pictures of a missing planet last seen in pursuit of an American dream. This fool actually thinks he could drive his Hummer on the moon, blasting DMX off the soundtrack of a South Park cartoon. Niggas used to buy their families out of slavery. Now we buy chains and links, smokes and drinks. And they’re paying me to record this. Even more if you hear it. Somebody tell me what I should do with the money? Yes, dread, tell me what you think I should do with the money. Exactly how much is it gonna cost to free Mumia? What’s he gonna do with his freedom? Talk on the radio? Radio programming is just that, a brain washed and cleaned of purpose. To be honest, some freedom of speech makes me nervous. And you, looking for another martyr in the form of a man, hair like a mane, with an outstretched hand … in a world of harsh thoughts, reactionary defensiveness and counter-intelligence, what exactly is innocence? Fuck it. I do believe in police brutality. Who do I make checks payable to? How about I pay you in prayers.
A young child stares at a glowing screen, transfixed by tales of violence. His teenage father tells him that that’s life, not that Barney shit. A purple dinosaur who speaks of love. A black man who speaks of blood. Which one is keeping it real, son? Who manufactured your steel, son? Hardcore, based on elements at the earth’s core. Fuck it, I’m gonna keep speaking ‘til my throat’s sore.
An emcee tells a crowd of hundreds to keep their hands in the air. An armed robber steps into a bank and tells everyone to put their hands in the air. A Christian minister gives a benediction while the congregation holds their hands in the air. I love the image of the happy Buddha with his hands in the air. Hands up if you’re confused. Define tomorrow. Your belief system ain’t louder than my car system. This nigga walks down my block with a rottweiler, a sub-woofer, on a leash. Each one teach one. A DJ spins a new philosophy into a barren mind. I can’t front on it. My head’s as if to clean the last image from an Etch A Sketch. Somethin’ like Rakim said. I could quote any emcee, but why should I? How would it benefit me? Karmic repercussions. Are your tales of reality worth their sonic-based discussions?
Suddenly the ground shivers and quakes. A newborn startles a
nd wakes. Her mother rushes to her bedside and holds her to her breast. Milk of sustenance heals and nourishes. From the depths of creation, life still flourishes. Yet, we focus on death and destruction, violence and corruption. My people, let Pharaoh go!
What have you bought into? How much will it cost to buy you out? How much will it cost to buy you out of the mentality that originally bought you, a dime a dozen? Y’all niggas are a dime a dozen.
Puffy’s in the boardroom.
I’m in my room, bored.
Your success made me doubt myself
And the whirling ways of this world.
Man, this love of hip-hop is like investing in a marital relationship, way past its prime, simply for the sake of the children, not realizing that we are actually fucking up their entire conception of relationships. They will be forced to work it out for the rest of their lives, falling in and out of love.
I’ve outgrown you.
I enjoy my memories of you much more than I enjoy our present moments. You allowed yourself to be defined by something less than yourself. But then, I never really stopped loving you. In fact, I love you more and began to love you through your manifestations in others: a breakbeat in a Led Zeppelin song; braggadocio in a Guns n’ Roses song; a breakbeat sped up to twice its speed in a drum and bass song. In my estimation, Portishead is hip-hop. Tricky is hip-hop. Björk is hip-hop. And they are hip-hop in ways that you have failed to be. Perhaps, they are hip-hop’s illegitimate children.
If hip-hop is a parent, it is negligent, not nurturing, and hardly responsible. But I can blame no one but myself. I expected too much of you without making my own contribution. I quit rhyming at the age of seventeen. Maybe my quitting on hip-hop led to hip-hop quitting on me.
Regardless, y’all have succeeded in making my earliest inspiration hardly an art form, hardly the voice of the youth anymore. You guys are boring, predictable. And maybe that’s why I’m working with Rick Rubin now. This is part of his karma.
Brown bags on the corner
Pants cuffed at his shin
Keloid from a razor
Right under his chin
Son’s looking at me
No sign of recognition
Sun shines on my left
No time for superstition
I peep the bulge in his vest
The smell of the cess
The glare of distress
The fear of the rest
The mark of a test
The mark of the beast
The streets of the east
The laws of the west
The flaws of the west
The cause of this mess
The haves and have-nots
The gets who get got
The shots from the cops
And cops who get shot
Innocents getting popped
Got whole blocks down on lock
But son’s looking at me
Yo why you looking at me?
I turn around and look back
Look down and look back
Say a prayer and look back
Yo, why you looking at me?
I wake up with doubt and fear. The first two faces I see in the morning, first cousins of the face of death (which I later found out was only a mask). The first thing I smell is most usually hesitation.
This feels like the kind of slump that is only healed by tragedy … or is that me willing something into existence?
I’d rather be propelled than go by foot.
I want her to call me first. At least that way I can construct a window in this house of fear.
A cardboard box called home.
These are the thoughts of the sinking. My pen man ship is the Titanic.
Maybe I’ve idolized too many dead geniuses. They all wore the same costume to the masquerade party hereafter.
Maintain a safe distance from these ideas. They are simply the many i’s attempting to be your capital. “I” that is.
These ideas float around my head like many little islands around the globe.
I may write something brilliant that I may not be able to read due to poor pen man ship.
See what I mean? That one was smaller than Tahiti.
A volcanic land mass.
Like an open wound.
I bowed to her
And when I rose
Found my head
In my hands
I bore a gift
Yet at the same time
Bore the pain
He was pronounced dead.
Pronounced dead.
Is that all it takes?
I was born at 12:30 in the morning. By 1 AM I was certain I would not remember much of my past. By 1:40 I had forgotten my name. By 2:12 the ancients had bid me farewell. By 2:30 I had swallowed a foreign brand. By 2:40 I had begun to hallucinate. It’s all coming back to me. I met my parents’ spirit guides at 4:30. It was they who told me of the sun. It was not what I expected. It only seemed to hint at light.
By 6:17 I had decided what I wanted to be. At 6:18 I discovered my outer shell. At 6:19 I began the process of dying: piss, shit, and crying, crawling and not flying. At 7 o’clock my mother held me and rocked. The spinning world stopped. She sang, “You’re the one. Indivisible son of sun, ancient mystical spirit come to become our tongue….”
As the rockets’ red
Glare in your eyes
Will you look down
Or glare back
As the one
Who defies?
I am concerned about a repetition of events. History only repeats itself for those who do not know their history. I must learn to accept each situation as a (k)new (unknown) situation, regardless of how much it appears to be a repetition of things that once occurred (yet, with different characters).
New—Knew
Knew—New
I love English. Through its dissection a million things are under/over-stood.
This is a new day.
Believe it or not.
Re-live it or not.
Everyday I am led
Into another room
Of your mansion
How foolish I must sound
Complaining about how wet
God’s kisses are
2000
Mental states
Have physical boundaries
How could you not
Realize the power of word
After being forced
To serve a sentence?
The walking dead
Walking with their own
Solar systems of blood and tissue
Circling around them
We are coming forth by day
And swollen with sway
Once upon a dawn’s early light
The symbols assembled
Crosses of every sort
Emblems of every fort
Phallic and lunar
Mystic and solar
Symbols of civilizations past
Politics and heretics
Of the asterisk
Mathematic symbols
At the cusp of a new age
Gathered on the grains
Of a brown page
I am not a writer
I am the plight
Of unfigured equations:
A stick of cinnamon
A grove a cloves
Cayenne and a bowl of honey
Water and money
And the irony of the evening
Was that only the white DJ
Would spin the record
With the refrain
“Black man know yourself.
Don’t forget your past.”
We cannot forget
Our past because
You will re member it
For us
Collective consciousness
Will there be war
Declared on this soil
In my lifetime?
History tells me, yes.
But I have difficulty
Imagining
fighting
Something that ain’t
Invisible.
Can music change the world?
Are these simply songs to be heard
And forgotten?
When JB said, “Say it loud …”
Did that affect a shift in consciousness?
Can the music of a society
Help mold its mental state?
Can a great song affect more than the way
A musician approaches his next song?
How about the way they approach their children.
Their loved ones, their lives?
I believe that I am
A man molded by music
And my intent is to mold
To shape
These are the ways
Of a carpenter
What has become
Of my simple truths?
They have become
Complex lies.
You close your eyes
When the beat swells
Feathers in inkwells
My word is bird
Purple pigeon
Of a street tale
Learned the ropes
Like strange fruit
Cloaked in brown shells
My tongue, the noose
Of untruth
Chants, prayers, and spells
Delegate of the
Unconventional
Member of the
Society-less
Author of the
In between
The graffiti on the
Whitewashed wall
Of the institution,
Now crumbled,
Has become
The cornerstone
Of our compound
Compounded dreams
Distilled vessels, refilled
Belief systems
Will be billed
Payable to
Who you pray to
If you wish
To pay in person
Addresses may vary
According to beliefs
Some will have to die first
Some may have to suffer
And be free from desires
Some may have to purge themselves,
Fast, cover their heads, think less
Of women, beat their children, abstain
From the secular world …
Yet others may simply be
Themselves
The Dead Emcee Scrolls Page 9
