Taxiphone Lyrics in English Gaël Faye

Below, I translated the lyrics of the song Taxiphone by Gaël Faye from French to English.
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
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SONG MEANING

Hop on the suburban train with Gaël Faye and you will ride through rain-soaked skies, graffiti-splashed walls, and the bittersweet ache of saudade. “Taxiphone” is the soundtrack of a young exile who swaps the bombs of his African childhood for the grey rooftops of France, only to discover a different kind of battle: racism in the schoolyard, biting cold on the platform, and an endless search for belonging. His small wages disappear in the neighborhood’s taxiphone booths, those tiny lifelines where immigrants queue to call home, chasing familiar voices across an ocean of homesickness.

From baggy Carhartts and untied laces to late-night nightmares about wars he has already escaped, Faye turns each verse into a diary page. He raps about studying hard instead of just rapping, about using music as therapy when no psychologist is around, and about dreaming of return flights that are too expensive—or too dangerous—to take. “Taxiphone” is at once a confession and a rallying cry, reminding us that exile can be both cage and catalyst, and that every scratchy long-distance call carries a whole world of hope, memory, and raw determination.

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