Baba Brinkman - Black-eyed Peas lyrics

Don't call it a remix, nah, call it a re-enactment I'll teach you how to adapt, from amoebas to rappers Just open The Origin of Species and read its chapters And study up on the impact of people's actions On farm animals, ducks, cows, dogs Pigeons, horses, and domestic crops They had wild ancestors, but somehow they went soft Kinda like underground rappers goin' pop It's all good, right? One hand washes the other We protect the cow, and the cow offers the udder And that's how we get a mouthful of bu*ter But in the wild, that cow is not gonna cut it See, there's nothing artificial about domestication Ant colonies keep domestic aphids It's still selection, just with a different selecting agent But you can't always predict the best arrangement For instance, humans domesticated black-eyed peas In West Africa around 7,000 BC And now they got millions of mouths to feed While their wild cousins just watch from the weeds Too many MCs not enough mics How many MCs wannabe MCs Too many MCs You play it in your system every night Too many MCs How many MCs Wannabe MCs Never be MCs Every woman and man wanna MC You play it in your system every night There's no intentional direction to the selection in nature It just patiently collects all the best variations And eventually species differentiate But it's open-ended, there's no definite destination And sometimes there's none in domestication either You're just listenin' to my raps trapped in your speakers But if enough people just like you plant my seed sh**, you might turn me into a black eyed pea You're like ancient breeders, rearranging the features Of a species of sheep or increasing the sweetness Of your peaches every season, when you choose to seed it Or to feed it or to breed it or to weed it out and delete it ‘Cause you just don't see it as needed, the preferences in question Could be for bigger chicken breasts or whippets with a thinner mid-section Or it could just be an inner predilection to pick the best in Any mixed collection, that's artificial selection You're a farmer, that's how it is, you can't opt out of it You have no choice but to make choices, you're helpless It's cause time itself is limited, it's not selfish It's just the rap version of the Doctrine of Malthus Too many MCs not enough mics How many MCs wannabe MCs Too many MCs You play it in your system every night Too many MCs How many MCs Wannabe MCs Never be MCs Every woman and man wanna MC You play it in your system every night Okay, so maybe it isn't all unconscious Survival in rap is a non-random process ‘Cause those who get ma**ive responses, influence Those who aspire to get ma**ive responses So if you say I sound like an Eminem rip-off Then I'll probably get pissed off and start flipping you off And grabbing my crotch and acting obnoxious And screaming “f** that, dawg, that's preposterous!” That's right, I'm serious, I deny my inheritance I invented myself from scratch like I'm parentless So don't let yourself get caught up in mere appearances This isn't just “imitation modified by experience” Nah, I could never be one of the black eyed peas ‘Cause I don't imitate black guys, please I imitate white guys who imitate black guys who lack IDs ‘Cause they're imitations too, that's my steez I'm keepin' it real, yeah, I'm innovating My Darwinism keeps the bullsh** disintegrating You want authenticity? Well, this is it, baby All it takes is ignorance of who you're imitating