[Part 1]
Hello ladies and gentlemen
Where should this little story begin
Coming through live from the zulu nation
Representing h-h-hip hop incarceration
The old school hippity hop is in town
You got four elements before we get down
Graffiti, Breaking, and DJ sk**s
The fourth is MC so I keep it real
F-R-A-K they call me Frak
And I'm bringing that real hip-hop right back
Put your seatbelts in and open wide
Blast off now, lets go on a ride
[Part 2]
Hip-hop began as an expression of oppression
Subversive with a purpose, a lesson and a message
When blacks represented as k**ers on TV
Rap was opportunity to view them creatively
But then Viacom and MTV, decided to commercialize the industry
It's a jungle sometimes it makes me wonder how they keep from going under
The siege of prison industrial complex, perennial process, to keep the colors in shutters distract you with bomb threats
And 90 percent of what we watching is controlled by six media conglomerates who pocket what is profited
And these media conglomerates have stocks within the hip-hop market and the margins of the private prison complex
So whats lucrative? rappers intellectuality, or these gangsta rappers who endorse criminality
The medias attempt at constructing a reality, but really its financially enamoring a fantasy
And hammering insanity inside of our morality, the prosecutors knocking with a lock em up mentality
Tryna vandalize and sanitize minds, while shows like Law & Order just romanticize crime
The black and brown people portrayed as drug dealers, when majority of d** are consumed by white people
I'd love to see an episode of cops in suburbia
The world is too cold an urban hypothermia
Casting attractive actors as hara**ed victims
While nobody can castrate this caste system
Filled with juridical jargon, beg your pardon?
Forced to plead guilty confronted with plea bargains
The new Jim crow, living in limbo
Tryna dodge the pen walking on tip-toes
The police presence makes it feel like enemy land
Got 23 years for 23 grams
And only 7 percent of federals involving a weapon
Its all d**, not even selling just for possession
Its origins originate in the Regan era
When they cut the social programs and replaced them with the terror
Instead of rehabilitation it was recapitulation of the
Same Discrimination that was sweeping cross the nation
Leaving addicts as the addicts, with a needles desperation
With a school to prison pipeline deceitful education
And 2.3 million people are in prison
5.1 are under correctional supervision
So after they do time and go through the worst
They get dropped into this unfamiliar universe
Denied the right to housing, denied the right employment
In society their choices are swimming in toilet
I'm not a sociologist
Hard to be an optimist when they're stalked on the project steps and get stopped and frisked
68 percent of people on probation
Within three years they are reinstated
Its all a perpetuation of the vicious cycle
A false colorblindness in a spiral
This is more than just a final
[Part 3]
Blasting off like an astronaut
This is the story of going to camp Afterbaugh
We drove past golf courses and suburbs
To law forces and shutters, from Hogwarts to the gutter
Tried to come in without a preconceived design
So I could peep it, seep it up, and reconstruct my mind
At first we were met by silence
An ambivalence, with mean mugs defending their shyness
Nervous that their writing wasn't spoken outspokenly
I told em there's no bouldering between rap and poetry
Then we had that Cypher in the corner
They told me I was ga**in em, a natural performer
Felt good being told I'm a fire MC
But little did they know they were inspiring me
Prisons maintained so privately
While their feelings restrained so privately
His poem from the perspective of a black Camaro
During a drive by, I felt it in my bone marrow
But he ripped it up and kicked the dust as if we'd frown upon it
Wish he knew that his reality was valid as a sonnet
But the censorship is endless made to feel like their expression is identified
As senseless desensitized and helpless
To gentrify the images that's put in their brains
And I tried to empathize but I couldn't relate
He's 17 with 2 kids and 15 with 2 nines
I'm 19 with 16s, that can't reach their true lives
They asked me bout college and I paint them a scene
Salivating over freedom that had came in a dream
Glossy distant eyes thinking high in a different life
If they switched the tides, when impulses improvised
Internalized their fist of pride till open palms itch at night
Blaming themselves when their clipped inside the system's lies
What is crime? I didn't see it in his eyes writing letters to a son that yet to materialize
What is crime? I didn't find it in the smile of a boy whose tear ducts are duct taped by denial
What is crime? I don't know anymore
The popo with 4-4s will blow holes in their door
The court knows their own code to hold onto the floor
Don't know what to ask francoso anymore
I guess my missions to split em with lyricism rid em from mental prism give lenses for better vision whose ending this bitter schism injecting my criticism tried to diagnose the problem its limitless but don't give in, listen