hiphoplives

These lyrics aren’t new, so don’t expect anything you haven’t heard already. But maybe it is something you haven’t fully appreciated yet. The song is “NY Weather Report” off Kweli’s Eardrum.

The song was actually second on the record, but it really served as a jump start for the album. The track is crazy, the hook is crazy, and Talib is really at his best lyrically. His ability to paint a picture is in full effect, as well as his ability to relate that picture to the listeners experience. He doesn’t just show you something, he shows you something you knew already, but in a way that makes it part of the tragic yet beautiful fabric of human existence, rather than just your own lonely circumstances. And if that was too wordy for ya, he makes your troubles seem easier by letting you know he feels your pain. Plus his wordplay is superb. This is a perfect example. Peep

Futuristic lyricist, straight from the renaissance
Top of the supper chain, rap’s upper echelons
My people sufferin’, slave to another chain
This voyage is maiden, like my mother other name
Is this your first trip to hell? We venture capitalists
If it’s a product, then we got it for sale
When I first started to spell, my words fell into rhymes
Turned into songs, everything else fell into line
I painted pictures you could see, the people bleed in my bars
When I was a teen I was mean, about to reach for the stars
So if I fell, I fell right in the cloud, tighten the valve
Niggas is watered down, used to be no bitin’ allowed
Now they gangstas, no cryin’ allowed
You probably see a fight on the stage before you see a fight in the crowd
I send this out to my people facin’ the storm, homey we ridin’ it out
You inspire what I’m writin’ about

I’m not a judge, but I’m handin’ out sentences
For political prisoners, and regular inmates with no visitors
Niggas in the street outside the reach of the ministers
Not those that say “spiritual,” but actual practitioners
Rap listeners who be openin’ Black businesses
This underground shit with samples that lack clearances
Once you get past appearances, you can tell whose shit is fake
Or whose shit is based on past experience
You really been to war hand to hand like crack sales
Building man to man, they tryna kill off the black male
Females left to raise up her son, from the day he was one
Til he twenty and he raise up a gun
And get to blazin’ for his place in the sun
The smoke grazin’ his lung, young in his years and he facin’ a ton
None of his peers wanna share the role of child care provider
But they’ll hit a nigga blunt and share saliva
You ain’t a rider and you hustlin’ backwards
Too many equate success with imitating these crackers
So our kids lookin’ up to drug dealers and rappers
We takin’ all the work away from the Black actors
Revelation is first and Armageddon is after
Tsunamis and hurricanes, natural disasters
The fast food culture, speed is always a factor
Instant gratification, they want the cash faster

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