[Verse 1: billy woods]

There is no me

The mask stifling but it's eye holes so I can see how to set you at ease

You at the job interview, you moving raw in the streets

Either way I be the nigga you need me to be

Fit like a glove

Polyurethane inner sleeve

I won't lie though, everything a bit muffled, hard to taste

Every breath smuggled, shoulders ache from the weight

Still in all, it's a small price to be safe (be safe, be safe)

To be safe

Childhood photos kept as keepsakes

I won't lie, I barely recognize the face

Be careful lest it break

Beware it slip while you in the wrong place

Mine rubber cement and gorilla glue, yours held together with duct tape

Water filter brackish

Esophagus brim with acid, nothing said

Approval tacit

Lead rub off when you grasp it

Inside, sour sweat, cheap plastic

Used to be a relief to come home, take it off, roll a cone

But putting it back on a problem all it's own, so now no

I think it's grown

Burrowed, grafted to bone, who knows?

Face like Play Doh, even alone

Laugh like Styrofoam when I realize I don't cross the street no more

They staring at they phones

[Verse 2: E L U C I D]

(Can't be

You can't be

You can't be

You can't be

You can't)

My wandering may come with a price

My nerves bad, forever ominous

So goth I was born Black, ever vigilant

Antenna extremity, lights out

Feeling through the most ordinary of times

Scanning eyes, from yea high

To absorb abuse considered normalized

Coated in this core design, fortified

Stay out of stores without the red [?]

Raising black children in the pedagogy of surrender for their betterment

Fuck that old world rhetoric

World gon' burn, bring the accelerant

A measured risk at every turn

When you say it it's cool, when I speak it you need evidence?

Deader things, never just so, it's never just so

Felt all federal levels to every ghetto

And I can't say that, even when I feel that

Even if I can't find the words to articulate fact that doesn't make it less true, when I take refuge

Ever evolved for sophisticated stressors

At the tip, sip the nectar

Tell me how you know so much about systems that don't affect you

Trauma talk

Rae and law[?], barrel of [?]

Karma lie

Some get over, some get by

Can't be mediocre, can't overachieve

Don't just stand there, why are you even breathing?

Who told you to fear they're not being facetious?

Peep it

You can't be

You can't be