James Baldwin speaking at his conference at UC Berkeley

“…can get through to the child. He or she can teach that child without menacing that child’s way of life, without menacing that child’s way of speaking. ‘Cuz every Black man in this country speaks two languages, you know, because we’re surrounded by a hostile population. So the question is not that the kid will be divested of his tools by the teacher. It’s that the teacher can’t teach him because she doesn’t respect him. If she respects him then the kid will respond to that respect and then he can learn.”

You knowing the status
Acting in my usual habits of mind
and I’m basking
Knighted at circle of rhyme
I’m glad as acts doing it for years true
Careers turning paranormal at 5 couldn’t make me fear
All the porcelain on fangs just veneers boo
I put my skeletons and boxes in a rearview
mirror snap like claws on contact
What’s a clause on contract? switching jobs is not bar to me
I can bond dichotomies uniting my minds
My kids they told me ride the rap route
I tell em they the starter key
calling up a fam and them
As three-ways collide
I'm up at 5 AM in autumn,
that’s me
free in my time
I’m in the golden hours
People dulling blocking my shine
As if said it’s ours
Giving people game and some plugs
If I was Sony powered I’d
make console and love to survive
I’m learning love is overrated
when it’s egos and pride
I find the vibes when these affinities touch
I’m never colorblind my BSU kids bigging me up
they be reminding me of me when I did private school buses
when being in the backseat was like a King stripe
Rosa Parks was all I’d ever read
Dive in other beats and find a memory
Swimming
If they were sharks, mine had great whites’
teeth in em (uh)
How to keep dreaming when your state is of an organized perception ?
Wanna a vision tight in seams
it’s a denim clothes section
With the jeans (genes)
Looking out I had the magic and my weapons sipping teenies light,
Daring, never scheming life,
Knocked the stereo, I’m indebted to Mr Feeney types. Y'all know
I never needed saving right?

I always made arrangements

“You’re dealing with a child. You’re dealing with a miracle. And you’re responsible for it. And, first of all, you have to give that child yourself.”

I always made arrangements, right?

" ‘Cuz every child is different, you know? And is changing all the time. From one second to the next. "

Verse 2

Guess who’s back out his mouth
I wasn’t verified last year Bandcamp helping me out
This the best I ever rapped
I know my word is like a given now
My future clearer than skies when
It’s hot up in June
This not a drizzy joint
My headspace is out of the blues
I did my exile in quarantines
below the heavens sorta seems I border step in every way
It’s why I’ve more to say
How can I leave it off the table
Dawg I bore the plate?
I go new places + explore the space of
My imagination’s finding new wider basic grinding moving like it’s skating time
90’s may of made me
A Black Millennial don’t get it twisted I ain’t Jay-Z or Ye
But when I fantasize a label like that withers away
I know the racializing, profiling, politics so kindly pushing past agendas bills and co-signing battlefields with more violence
News like that’ll blow you away.
Been on a whole other page
Reading Baldwin talking teachers
Amazing seem like nothing has changed just like my skin and the game ironic
just like the grades I got
Crossing that stage and college
Schooled me a way
Aye, What’s the order of things?
What keep us acting like our knowledge restrained ?
Why me keep rapping keeps em looking estranged
they be like who is this crazy guy? I stay with my lanes until I stop.
Switch it up and grip the hoopty reigns
All my drive’s a movie a frame
Keeps me from y’all rearranging.

I always made arrangements

“You know, by the time he’s 20 and this country ends. And America will be much less important. It will no longer be the center of the world when this country comes to an end.”

I always made arrangements

I always made arrangements, right?

I always made arrangements

Check

“What do you mean by the word revolution? We cannot have an armed insurrection in this country at this moment, you know? I’m just trying to be realistic. They got the guns. So we have to do it another way. But that’s alright, ‘cuz it will be done.”