Overture (with Omari Hardwick)

I use the mic like a walkie-talkie
 Cali love with a bite of Milwaukee
 DMV in my bloodline, I done start wars with a jabberwocky
 Eye of the tiger, call a nigga Rocky
 The finish line between humble and cocky
 Use verse and rhyme to extend the time for others
 Crumble every clock I see with a twelve followin' behind my brothers
 Call me the mothership, my music for the mothers
 I been a motherfucker
 Undercover like a super man, make a woman wonder
 Make a hater my lover
 But, equally, I been a rubber band without elasticity
 Been a trap man drastically stuck in the gutter
 A fallen star never to be discovered
 An inmate with a number but orange was never my color
 Double my entendre
 Rap 'til I can sell my bars to the highest sucker
 R&B money wrapped in a young thugger
 Keep my beats on repeat like they stu-stutter
 Pretty on some Ali
 I done become the Thrilla in Manila
 New Jack City on some pain, probably
 Call a brother Duh Duh Duh
 But my train done been wobbly as any other
 Big body truck in the mud
 Or the feet that grew from the concrete
 'Til I'm big as Jigga and the nigga he came up under
 I went from notorious to glorious
 I flew above them storms, wrestlin' with thunder
 'Til I be one, a Neo-Morpheus
 And by the time I be six I knew I was more than his
 Is what it is, this is how I feel
 Like a one-man force of a nature strong in my mind
 'Til you go on-line orderin' my kind to savage your shit
 And with them lines I just spit I hope you're recording this skit
 This ain't no average shit
 I'm hood-born, a dark form with a candlestick
 I'm rockin' with the good Lord and His manuscript
 The ghost of the too-poor-to-rock-sandals kid
 And before I could handle all of this
 I was hard to walk a mile in my own shit
 A prodigal smile with a poem losin' that glow it used to give
 I was two roads diverged, I chose the narrowest
 I done seen them doors close like pharaohs did
 I been the afterparty to my own show, ya dig?
 I just needed to know, can I live?
 Like Hov did way back when
 Then lo and behold, these old wings found some wind
 Dealt with the stings from them arrows I felt within
 And elevated to where them sparrows been
 'Til that became equal with the skies them eagles swim
 But if height reflects how slight life done slipped
 I been right with the lowest of the invalid
 No fight left in my battleship
 A kite with broken ribs
 Bleek Gilliam with a busted lip
 No Mo' Better Blues, just a permanent bruise where the horn used to fit
 Low like where the throw up is
 Low like a roach's crib
 Low like slow to get up on the count of ten
 To keep it all the way five hundred, low as your basement, wasted
 Dazed and too confused to find my placement
 Nightmares of degradation
 When I was a kid I used to dream of this kind of graduation
 Now I'm on some Tom Hanks, I done got too big, but
 Still a bad boy gettin' paid for them toys
 I play station, I give thanks
 And use God's noise as a celebration
 I'ma sing with that thing for your soul's masturbation
 I'ma bring enough king to control your manifestation
 And you gon' scream with anticipation
 While you turn from all the lil' boy-girls they play on your radio stations
 This man done reappeared when the world is filled with fear and intrepidation
 The screen got the same scene
 It just seems too many Elvises done left the building to believe the motivation
 The people fiendin' for that old feelin'
 So the big Tank just pulled back into the station
 This time with a blue and red light in the basement
 This that new height we chasin'
 I'm here to serve you with a new found dedication
 Same food for thought through sound, just made it where you can better taste it
 Use what I sing now and never for the best of nations
 And the rest for the ones brown who don't feel blessed enough to make it
 I done cleaned the mess up, no more cryin'
 Just a brave lion standin' atop Mount Zion
 I come to you open and naked
 I come to you knowin' without hesitation
 Fifty thousand waitin' for my shit
 I'ma give you every last drop of it
 Until we all on the same trip to destination
 Come fuck with it, my elevation