CHALLENGER'S RAP

• loopin a primo beat flippin soliloquy, vinyl from Dilla on crates in my kitchen, i mix in the hiss with a pinch of that imagery
• tuned to the minor like miles in the morning, lace up in black like i'm ghostin through Harlem, a basquiat sketch in the jacket they gifted me
• wisdom in lines like i copied from baldwin, i channel his voice when the silence is grippin me
• verses are verses and purpose is symmetry, hop in a lyft, let the windows drop low while i pen on my phone to a loop from Madlib in me
• a poem in motion that morphs into ministry, studied the footnotes of thought that i'm laced in, i'm winning
• read me a line from a lecture, i mirror the rhythm then bend it with sinners
• rhyme like a monk in a monaster, measure by measure i'm movin through metrics like Morse code met with a tremor
• syllables stack like the crates in amoeba, i sort em by tempo and pressin and era
• croon on a bar like i'm halfway in Paris with wine on my tongue and a pen in my terror
• switch on a loop like i'm live with a jazz trio tappin the snare through a mirror
• walk through the Bronx with a hood on my thoughts, step in a label and never explain it, i rhyme like the budget got printed forever
• flows in a folder marked only when ready, they begged me to drop it, blendin the real and the raw with the rhythm
• like Cole in the cut with a chip on his sweater, taught by the scratch in a dusty cassette that
• my brother rewound til the plastic was severed, not here for flashes or fame in the frame, i'm framed by the frame like a poet in leather
• when i let the sample get weathered, cycles of thought that i loop with intention
• a tension between being now and forever, loud in the record
• you feel what i said when the room gettin lesser, i rhyme like i live at the edge of a threshold
• a yes or a no with the breath of a question, studied the booth like i studied a movement
• like truth was a booth in a basement in Bedford, scribblin calmly while scrolling through libraries, noddin to pressure
• pain in my patterns but peace in the phrasing, i float like i'm cut from a cloth you don't measure
• label me what you want, lyricist, mystic, minimalist bent on disrupting conventions
• catalog memories like they pressin on Acetate, jazz in my headphones, a head full of questions
• loop through the scratch with a note in my voice that's inheritin gravity, mentors were mixtapes
• learned how to rhyme by just walkin through tragedy, didn't do battles for clout or the chatter, i battled the thought of my thoughts gettin mad at me
• pieced every rhyme with the calm of anatomy, pen like the words got a breathin anatomy
• 7am with a croissant and a concept, i draft in the dark with the spark of a canopy
• ink in my palms like psalms in a bottle, i channel the noise into symmetry rapidly
• i pause every comma like a canopy, sharin the strategy, studied their pain and their phrasing for days, now i line up my page like it's gradin a galaxy
• a room where the booth don't compress my capacity, pacing through poems like i'm panning for gold in a stream full of phrases with shimmer and strategy
• not to dance in a chain, but to chant with the saints when the syntax is shattering
• give me a beat with intention, i'll bend it like metal, then settle in naturally
• stood on the edge of a whisper and rapped what i felt, breath of a monk in the lungs of a craftsman, i shape what i say like a blacksmith in agony
• rhyme like a reed in a solo, taught the whole game how to channel it masterfully, name what you want, i move like the pen been possessed by a faculty
• truth in the pocket, the beat like a letter, i fold it and seal it with wax from a tragedy