"[1: Bad Dreams]

My destiny to slang slangs in this rap thang

Gift of game from pops like my last name

Even though I fell in love from the first boom bap

In the goon trap I didn’t know that he would soon rap

I was just a young buck trying to fill my lungs up

Brainy cards played the odds. You could call it dumb luck

Good times, Moving On Up to What was Happening

The Facts of Life made the Different World we was rapping in

Teachers seen the mind on me, streets seen the crime on me

I seen the music but I thought it wasn’t time for me

But patiently I was painting up the pages

Mistakenly waiting for permission to spit my greatness

Then I heard KRS-One spit poetry

I know I got some flows, B. I’m a make ‘em notice me

Damn! What the hell was I waiting for?

If I’d a known the game was this raw I would have played before

Now I try to quit but I can’t give it up

Microphone addiction to the death, I never get enough

Microphone precision from the best, you better get a cut

‘cause now I’m on some bullshit and haters, y’all can lick it up

Shout out to Ferguson, soldiers never giving up

Hustle never stops ‘til the truth is getting lifted up

Bring the tear gas, weird ass. We don’t give a fuck

‘cause all we do is read, teach, protest and get it crunk

[2: A.D. Carson]

One thing I lack is patience—

So if you see me waiting it isn’t because I’m taking

Time for granted. I been managing to seem to be okay with the

Trajectory that settles me to maybe lean to making up

Where I be lacking, and inhabit that whole other world

Where beauty is reflected in the self, and not by Cover Girls

Dudes who we respect connect to more than being mannish

It’s not like it’s gone vanish. It’s not that we can’t manage our vices

It would be nice to be normal to see us positive

But realistically, I know the truth, and niggas gotta live

I gotta give it one hundred and ten percent of my effort

You don’t just go from zero to being respected

So I’ll let it be my legacy to be the one who said it and meant it

It’s bullshit we live through, but we ain’t invent it

So you can Stevie me with your decency speeches

I’m teaching we are masters of fates that we are presented

And I ain’t trying to quit, so I can’t give it up

Word to the words—keep the Dead Poets spirits up

Words be surface to the monuments we building up

And living in, and it begins with you stopping to listen up

Shout out to getting up, making the change happen

Making ‘em pay attention. Not waiting to be the action

Not waiting to be the victim, but taking ‘em to the task they were given

‘Cause this is life, not waiting to have permission to live it."