LEARN LYRICS

My life's suburban trains

Grey homes, tagged walls

Rainy skies

So much saudade

They call me Lisbon

The little I make

I blow it on Taxiphones, yeah

My life's suburban trains

Grey homes, tagged walls

Rainy skies

So much saudade

They call me Lisbon

The little I make

I blow it on Taxiphones

I spit rhymes full of

F*ck your race

In my trial runs

I was decked out in baggy Carhartt

Shoes without laces

I was from Africa, they told me, you know

You're underdeveloped

So I rebelled

I had to grind

To shut some mouths

I was the laughing stock of the whole school

All uprooted

Only Africans in the playground

Unaccompanied minor

They acted tough

Talking shakedowns and switchblades

I came from where shells blew

And tanks rolled

OK, OK, France means peace

Safety

But it's also the bite of cold

And loneliness

Eldorado wasn't that great

No, dad lied to us

If I stay here, it's not to rap

But to milk the schooling

Years go by

And leaves fall

Every autumn

And I'm surprised I'm still here

Vowels and consonants

My life's written on scraps of paper

I hum and croon

A blues that never leaves me

Since the school benches, yeah

My life's suburban trains

Grey homes, tagged walls

Rainy skies

So much saudade

They call me Lisbon

The little I make

I blow it on Taxiphones, yeah

My life's suburban trains

Grey homes, tagged walls

Rainy skies

So much saudade

They call me Lisbon

The little I make

I blow it on Taxiphones

And then I take root in the asphalt

Gotta hunt for cash

Buy sweaters

Yeah the cold kills us

I never get used to it

And every night

I have nightmares

About my past

I wet the bed

I dream that Edward Norton

Is gonna break my teeth

I write for lil sis

Still bitter, my life is bland

All my hearts and without the pen

Mom, I swear I'll kill myself

In school I was unruly, back then

I wanna bolt from here

You wanna be my buddy

Can't, tonight I've got swimming

I'm losing my mind at home

Lots of skeletons in the closet

Our pasts of genocide, of exile

It's all just blackout

I look for the street racket

The silence of books

I live in a shack on the moon

When the world crumbles

I've seen worlds end

The massacres

The gas-soaked lynchings

And I watch kids my age

I envy their innocence

They don't know everything's possible

That everything can collapse

From one day to the next

Like in a Chinua Achebe novel

And yeah

My life's suburban trains

Grey homes, tagged walls

Rainy skies

So much saudade

They call me Lisbon

The little I make

I blow it on Taxiphones, yeah

My life's suburban trains

Grey homes, tagged walls

Rainy skies

So much saudade

They call me Lisbon

The little I make

I blow it on Taxiphones

I call my dad back home

I dream of going back but kerosene's pricey

Anyway it's dead

Up north the army's fighting rebels

It's a mess

Kid with no bearings, ill at ease in his Cortez

In parentheses

Living exile is being quarantined

Gotta move on, mom keeps saying

Warrior mindset

I'm padlocked by my past

I move forward in reverse

Torn from my roots

As if burned with acid

No shrink, only music

Will be my catharsis

Now I write like I breathe

But my breathing's blocked

Everything inspires me, I inhale life

I'm learning to take it

Paris, a field of canna in summer

I stay sitting on the couch

I think back to those years gone by

My first rapped lines

When I spewed lots of

F*ck your race

In my first attempts

I was decked out in baggy Carhartt

Shoes without laces

I was from Africa, they told me, you know

You're underdeveloped

So I rebelled

I started rapping

To shut some mouths