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!
