My life's suburban trains
_____
Grey homes, tagged walls
_____
I blow it on Taxiphones, yeah
_____
My life's suburban trains
_____
Grey homes, tagged walls
_____
I blow it on Taxiphones
_____
I spit rhymes full of
_____
In my trial runs
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I was decked out in baggy Carhartt
_____
I was from Africa, they told me, you know
_____
I was the laughing stock of the whole school
_____
Only Africans in the playground
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Talking shakedowns and switchblades
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I came from where shells blew
_____
And tanks rolled
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OK, OK, France means peace
_____
But it's also the bite of cold
_____
Eldorado wasn't that great
_____
If I stay here, it's not to rap
But to milk the schooling
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And I'm surprised I'm still here
_____
My life's written on scraps of paper
_____
I hum and croon
_____
A blues that never leaves me
_____
Since the school benches, yeah
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My life's suburban trains
_____
Grey homes, tagged walls
_____
I blow it on Taxiphones, yeah
_____
My life's suburban trains
_____
Grey homes, tagged walls
_____
I blow it on Taxiphones
_____
And then I take root in the asphalt
_____
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
_____
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
_____
I live in a shack on the moon
_____
I've seen worlds end
_____
The gas-soaked lynchings
_____
And I watch kids my age
_____
They don't know everything's possible
_____
That everything can collapse
_____
Like in a Chinua Achebe novel
_____
My life's suburban trains
_____
Grey homes, tagged walls
_____
I blow it on Taxiphones, yeah
_____
My life's suburban trains
_____
Grey homes, tagged walls
_____
I blow it on Taxiphones
_____
I call my dad back home
_____
I dream of going back but kerosene's pricey
_____
Up north the army's fighting rebels
_____
Kid with no bearings, ill at ease in his Cortez
_____
Living exile is being quarantined
_____
Gotta move on, mom keeps saying
_____
I'm padlocked by my past
I move forward in reverse
_____
No shrink, only music
_____
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
_____
I was decked out in baggy Carhartt
_____
I was from Africa, they told me, you know