El-P - Take, Hold, Fire! lyrics

[Verse One: Mr. Lif] Take my check, take my intellect Take my self-respect Ban my dialect, hang me from a tree Slice my neck Take my head as a monument of the hatred of opposites Take the time to sell my culture Count how you profited Take a break, take two What's it gonna take to make you Understand the man I equate to I create crews One thousand, two thousand f** it, bring the whole central housing Take a trip to free brothers from penitentiares Judges steady handing out centuries That n***a got life for growing weed Ah! See the plan? He could never be a man Never get to help his fam Just like Apartheid that didn't die back in '91 Parents were subject to interference If they caught you late trying to raise a son or daughter They'd use a gun or a knife as they summoned slaughter And I wish I could wring the blood out of your clothes Give you back your afros and your strong black nose But what's done is done Who's gone is gone Once again, the sun illuminates bodies at dawn And I yawn and grow weary Succumbed to old theory That strips my wits of thoughts I used to hold dearly So clearly the gold nearly ended existence A young brother who hungers, laying there listless A rich brother who hovers, hoarding his riches A fatal divide Acts of the colonized It's a worldwide unwise data that leaks when we speak Repeats 'till decency depletes Then leaks through our moral fabric forming havoc We're left reminiscing what was written on a tablet It's a path we've forgotten - lost in our heads And I know they're listening - so P.S.: f** the feds! [Verse Two: Aesop Rock] (And I know they're listening - so P.S. f** the feds!) Hold weight, hold water, hold your head above the latter While I'm at it, hope your story holds a little when it matters The mold inside his holding cell became proof of the leak Now he holds his tongue behind his teeth in a room with police One call alloted, tried to holler at his cousin Who couldn't hold his liquor, let alone hold the discussion Twenty seconds in, he pa**ed out on the hold bu*ton 'Til his quarter ran out, with the dreams of ever holding something No, it isn't folklore; Yes, it's morbid If he hold heat, he'd probably hold grudges, not horses We grew up in the hold it, now hit it When hold it down meant it was better to hold the crown, not the image You bow to a gimmick, you bound to hold back the incentive Which your friends will hold against you When you haul back to the village Fall back, crawl back to the k**ers Who couldn't hold a candle to the actual definition of "illest" [Verse Three: El-P] Little man said I was fired Under artificial fire up in the sky Florescent tungsten hovered under cubicle design Interrupted just before final synaptic nerve could fire And I lost count right as I got up to the last digit in Pi What a fiery piece of trash (ba*tard) Why, I ought to fire the boomstick in your face And tell the tribe that it was "magic" You tried to take my soul but now it's "fire in the hole!" And I'm fired up Walking through the office firing automatics You didn't start the fire, you simply sparked it Next time you light a fire under my a**, better hope that you're flame retardant Arson is in my bent hear, you're begging to see the billow Of the smokes of the fires of Odin, enter the fire starter See, every little monotonous moment that I punched the clock Was equivalent to furnace fuel In the form of a "fiery rock!" Welcome to trial by fire measured in Celsius You can fire me from the job but I promise I'm walking out the office healthiest