A senior’s lament about why he can’t understand rap

I don’t mind listenin’ to rapping / good rapping that is

The kind that makes your skin tingle and your money jingle

I ain’t wise to the dumb rhymes that just waste my time

You gotta do better than little bitty words if you’re talking to me

I dig the part about acting the ass to prove that you’re free

It reminds me to feel kindly toward the less fortunate /

Here’s a nickel / go buy yourself a pickle / don’t be fickle

Fake rhymes out of time leave everyone groaning moaning

You know the kind / they never paid attention in school

Gotta slick act / try so hard not to look the fool

The faster they rap the harder they breathe

Make you think Satan’s dancin’ on his feet

They ain’t go no rhyme behind, no rhythm behind, no time

Can’t pass math / geometry / algebra or calculus

Maybe that’s why they number measures to the beat

It ain’t a new song / it ain’t a new way of singing

Really rather, really silly, it’s a new way of talking

Rapping to the beat while all the brothers keep walking

While all the sisters keep making taking faking shaking

Faking it, making it, hiding it, taking it

Best of all bests better than best, lying about it

Hiding the talent that may exist, featuring the beat

So y’all can sit down and pretend to musically feast

On a rush of words that ain’t got no connection

Between beginning and end / unless around curves your mind can bend

Word kinship stillborn rhyme’d / dead as the ideas that they’re skipping

Yeah just once I’d like to see one of the smotherin’ brothers rapping

Try to make a word kinship sail out of lyrical miracle chimerical

Three-syllable joy rides a little too taxing for a mind that ain’t waxin’

Uneducated brain cells can’t triple up past double-up-and-double-down

Trigonometry fires a hundred trillion neuron cells

Rings up every Bright Idea echoin’ clear as bells

Who gonna find your concepts at 100 words a minute

Who gonna find the straw dog the hot dog the lyin’ dog

The syllogism the sophism, the tapestry of sophistry

The concept of the precept, the deception of the inception

Delete excrete postulate speculate deliberate exaggerate

Why else settle for speeding down the highway of the ‘hood

Pretending like a king you is spreadin’ cash to do some good

Passing by working folk suddenly invisible as though you gone blind

Why else settle for speeding down the highway of the mind

Spreadin’ the notions that gonna cause a commotion

Gonna spark a riot / gonna spark a feud / gonna spark a shootin’

Gonna measure success in the number of dead /

Followed by a whole lot of lootin’

Music that brings death will bring the death of music

Remember to render unto Caesar the things that Caesar stole

Remember to render unto Caesar bail money for the public defender

What to do with the brother who ain’t down with the lyin’ stealin’ killin’

Don’t matter which side you come a-prancing down the aisle

Poor black trash or poor white trash

Rich white trash or rich black trash

Burn down all them mother-beeping stealin’ ways and turn ‘em to ash

Lucky shot across the bow with that miracle lyrical chimerical triple

Ain’t like you could burn me a new one / quadruple reply

With a frondescence reminiscence and a truncheon luncheon

Or split the hair atop importunity’s opportunity deportability

Paucity of words signals paucity of ideas

Negativity of words signals vacuum of empty lots

Obviates the need to challenge, deny, counter-negate

Obliterates the need to negate the essence of the frondescence

When the benevolence of the inheritance ain’t what it’s cracked up to be

Ain’t no winner in rap save the two-syllabl’d word pusher

“Limited ability due to academic achievement gap”

“Two years behind literacy reading level”

“Reading Level, Math Level, Thinking Level equals zero going nowhere”

Best you get a job / join the army / get to work / please don’t shirk

You don’t like minimum wage / join a gang

End up in your jail cell / complain about the food

“Get sick get well / hop bail / 20 years of schoolin’ and they put you on the day shift

Look out kids it’s something you did but you don’t know when

The pump don’t work because the vandals took the handle”

Dylan know-it poet / “Kennedy Center of the Arts Honoree”

No bungeree foolin’ / could it be ‘cos his music was

Entertaining educating ‘nlightening edifying elucidating

Quintuple E-Five Word High blew past the last milestone in the sky

What is Rap like?  like the secret handshake the secret lingo

Of the driftin’ minds who daydream their hooky ways in and out of school

Their teachers’ names were hormone, girlfriend, money, greed

The rapsters got just brains enough to feed their stomachs’ need

But givin’ hope to little kids ain’t their thing

They ain’t got time to be showin’ up modelin’ up

Here’s my challenge to the biggest of the fools

You writing a song or digging a grave for your life’s epitaph?

Here lies a king of jest good at lying, better at jesting

Thought his slick speedy word flow made him the best

Yet Shakespeare’s still read four centuries past his death

Suck in your gut and drink that in with your next breath

Next time you spewin’ 400 words a minute in your rap

Ask yourself this / “how do I know my truth ain’t just crap?”

Word speed ain’t never equaled speed of mind and soul

You can’t feed hungry minds with speed that flees

Who’ll be reading you 400 years from now / that’s a joke!

Who’ll be knowin’ you just 4 years from now

Come two presidential cycles / two rounds of Olympic games

Come battered-bicycle frozen-icicle upside your mental cycle

Your words won’t last / your words gonna start fadin’ fast

Your ideas will shrivel and shrink / before memory can blink

You gotta have something to say / you gotta have something to tell

How come you can’t sit still and create something swell

How come you gotta rely on everyone else’s dancin’ beat

How come you gotta rely on this one and only musical beat

Of someone else’s feet / livin’ on the street / out in the heat

You livenin’ up the language but you killin’ the music bro’

Limiting yourself the way you do to a tune you think true

To a single solitary monochromatic monotonous melody

Missing the polyphonic polychromatic harmonious rhythm

Heart-beat, dance-beat, gotta-move-beat is okay for a start

But after awhile it wears out its welcome in my heart

I don’t mind listenin’ to rapping / good rapping that is

The kind that makes your skin tingle and your money jingle

I ain’t wise to the dumb rhymes that just waste my time

You gotta do better than little bitty words if you’re talking to me

Ain’t no rapster / ain’t no poet / ain’t no sax-blowin’ hipster

If you don’t mind, Mr. Rapster Man, if you be so kind

To expand your repertoire just a little bit wider

I’m just looking for some “finer words of poetry”

Upon which for to rest my flowin’ growin’ mind!