2 Steps Forward - Intellectual

Hook:

I take 2 steps forward, Five steps back

Lately I been lazy like the way Mase rappin'

Or lazy like the way Johnny Cash used to sing

Maybe lately that's the reason cash ain't be comin' in

Verse 1:

No excuses I'm learning how to lose

Because that's the only way to fine-tune and make improvements

Critics keep on chipping in their two cents

But they got their record for free, shoot!

Nowadays, music's like sewage, nasty and polluted

Oversaturated I don't want nothin' to do with it

So when they ask the question who my influence is

I go back to the nineties and tell em Brand Nubian

Gave radio a shot, but got fooled again

All it is is a bunch of hootin' hollerin' hooligans

Crying like babies, acting like their two again

Pardon my rudeness, but you ruin my mood

I don't just do this for food, there's more to it than the music

So I got to be intuitive to use this gift

It's like fluid when it oozes

But writers block like gridlock will leave you clueless

My ambitions to use and not abuse

Get me without grooves it's like mechanic's without their toolkits

(Can't work without my tools man)

Hook

Verse 2:

Industry tried to play me, left me with some roses

Must've thought I was stupider than the three stooges

They tried to hang me, I slipped out of their nooses

So I pulled a Chris Brown, I'm throwing up my deuces

Downsized like Rice to Couscous

Put that lightweight, bullet proof truth in the booth

Cooped up for months trying to spit fire they can ride to

Go up to that drive-thru, tell 'em it's that new B. Reith dude

True, can I even get more clear

Make it *boom* so hard shake your rear view mirror

Unless you got car speakers like the ones I own

Had to pan them to the left, because the right one was blown

You're riding on chrome, I'm riding on plastic

Two of them got cracked, becaus I hit a curb distracted

But ain't no big deal

May not have a nice whip, but I still got whip appeal

Hook

Bridge:

(Instrumental)

2 steps forward, 5 steps back

5 steps back, 5 steps back (Alright, Alright, Alright)

Verse 3:

I raps for a living, perhaps I've been given

A gift that is envied by Mathematicians

But are we that different, we both work in labs

While they dissect formulas, I dissect rhythms

But I don't get paid much, that'll keep you humble son

Radio won't play me much, that's causing me troublesome

People wanna neigh say, play me like a dummy dumb

Tried to shut me down, so I Dikembe Mitumbo'd them

Backhanded right back at 'em like Wimbledon

That's for trying to tell me what I shouldn't have or should've done

Anyways, my time it'll come

I can smell it from a mile away like Cinnabon