[The Koreatown Oddity]

Kicking doors off the hinges

Being ignorant

A lot of Black musicians

Couldn't come through the entrance

Had to go through the kitchen

Even if the reason why people buy tickets

Was ‘cause their name was on the marquee

I don’t need the car keys to get me started

Just a push of a button

If you comprehend the jargon

‘cause me and mines we gonna get ours regardless

A gem still shines through

Amongst the pile of garbage

Who gonna get thrown the farthest

Whеn we're talking about trust

I danced on thе tarpits and didn't get stuck

Once, what’s a box?

(what is it?)

An irrelevant element

Especially when I expand the space within beyond the measurements

Bullshit they selling it

Just to be employed

And I ain't buying it with credit or bitcoin

I'm from the LA when Big Boy was a big boy

As a kid eating spaghetti at Bob's Big Boy

Wicked gremlins get a small window to enjoy

The payback is more digits when I send the invoice

Opposition is met with laughter

You gonna respect my craft like classic Black actors:

Delroy Lindo, Keith David, Clifton Powell

Young Black and gifted with infinite styles

No tricks gimmicks or thirty day free trials

[Rhys Langston]

My political awakening began as a

Black kid in a synagogue

Recitation of ancient rites

Turned digital from analog

Obsessed with consumer tech

I stayed inspecting specifications on IGN and CNET

Longsword was my major skill

And I chose the small afro in

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

You know, comparatively

To racist online trolls I was something like

The Xbox Live voice chat

Colin Kaepernick

Fin de siècle, you know the mid-aughts'

Snail's pace in high speed technology

Rebooting a DSL modem

And dunking on regulation at 14

Just to load up the Afro-eccentric character creation screen:

Real bifurcated Negro nerd

Bumping Vernon Reid and

Watching Tayshaun Prince highlights

Post-tournament eating pickled turnips

And mistaken for Persian in Van Nuys

(you know, I mean I could probably learn

Some Farsi on the side, whatever)

Misidentification of Rhys Langston

So it goes what I've surmised in feeling

Single Black mother renting a two bedroom in Los Feliz

Me and my brother not realizing that was a zenith

20 years later the rental market got us leasing

Our European features

Now forms this cane river Creole teetotaling

21st century genius

And you can either recognize or you can suck my

Latte-colored

Prosody

(thought I was gonna say something else

Didn't you?)